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HEREWARD AND OUTLAWRY IN FENLAND CULTURE: A STUDY OF LOCAL NARRATIVE AND TRADITION IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

Timothy J. Lundgren, B.A., M.A.

*****

The Ohio State University 1996

Dissertation Committee: Approved by

Professor Nicholas Howe, Adviser I'Lo;-''

Professor Patrick B. Mullen Advisor, English Department

Professor Alan K. Brown UMI Number: 9710612

This microform edition Is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 ABSTRACT

Building on recent work in medieval folklore seeking new ways to historicize the

literature and traditions of the Middle Ages, this dissertation depicts the social environments inhabited by medieval outlaws and their roles in those environments. 1 trace outlawry and related terms, such as exile and excommunication, through a variety of Anglo-Saxon documents, providing examples of outlawry in theory and practice. This diverse material allows us to see how outlaw stories were told, recreating the cultural context for outlaw-hero narratives; it also demonstrates close links between Anglo-Saxon ideas of outlawry, excommunication, and exile, all themes important to Old English literature.

After exploring the political and cultural bases of outlawry, I turn to the earliest cycle of outlaw narrative in England, the eleventh-century Gesta Herewardi. Unpolished and based on local traditions, the Gesta provides insights into the construction of outlaw-hero legends, as well as the social and historical circumstances of their telling. Although the

Gesta has long been regarded as a product of early nationalistic spirit, it is more than early stories of English nationalism and racial identity politics. Written by a monk, the Gesta reveals the monasteries of the East Midland fenlands reconstructing their mythologies to fit changing roles after the Norman Conquest. The process of translating Hereward narratives from popular legend to institutional history, as well as from English to Latin, reveals how the fenland monasteries reworked popular legends into institutional texts as part of their reaction to societal changes in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Traditions about Hereward are also recorded in a variety of chronicles in and around the East Midland fenlands. Read in relation to one another, these legends form an essential link in the outlaw-hero storytelling tradition that extends from the Old English stories of

Godwin to the later insular romances. Ultimately, this dissertation reveals the neglected early history of a long-lived popular and literary tradition, exploring its relationship to local culture, providing insight into the ways that popular legends capture and present the cultural beliefs underlying regional political turmoil, and highlighting the ways that these legends are worked into official and institutional texts.

Ill Dedicated with love to my father and mother, Richard and Margaret Lundgren; their constant support, encouragement, and unflagging faith that I would complete this project motivated me to keep working even though the task sometimes seemed endless.

And also to my wife, Tess Lundgren, who has not only freely provided me with the time and space to pursue this degree, but has actively assisted me through daily words and acts of help, encouragment, and love.

And to Abigail Lundgren, who gave me the final push to finish this.

IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to particularly acknowledge the untiring efforts of Professor Nicholas

Howe, who demonstrated astonishing stamina in reading draft after draft of these chapters, and yet still always managed to be an interested, insightful, and extremely helpful reader and critic. I would further like to gratefully acknowledge that this dissertation was supported in part by a National Endowment for the Humanities Dissertation Fellowship. VITA

1985 A.B. Hope College, Holland, MI

1991...... M.A. University of Colorado, Boulder, CO

PUBLICATIONS

“The Robin Hood Ballads and the English Outlaw Tradition.” Southern Folklore 53 (3) (1996).

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: English

VI TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Abstract...... ii

Acknowledgments ...... v

Vita...... vi

Chapter I : Introduction - Ooutlaws and Outlaw Narratives in Anglo-Saxon England.... 1

Chapter 2: Placing the Gesta Herewardi in Context ...... 48

Chapter 3: The Gesta Herewardi and the Making of a Monastic Hero ...... 95

Chapter 4: Hereward beyond the Gesta...... 138

Bibliography...... 173

VII CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION: OUTLAWS AND OUTLAW NARRATIVES

IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

Outlaw narratives have not generally been considered as a genre by literary scholars, although several familiar works from the Middle Ages focus on outlaws, most notably the romance of Gamelyn, and the Robin Hood ballads. If we can include the exile and the excommunicant within our conception of the outlaw, as I will argue a medieval audience

may well have, then a much larger body of literature becomes relevant. Exile and dispossession are ancient themes in English literature, present in the very earliest works from the Anglo-Saxon period. It is at that point that I wish to begin, then, with a survey of the development of outlaws and outlaw narratives in the Anglo-Saxon period. An understanding of the origins and form of the early outlaw legends will enable us to better interpret the causes of the later changes and developments in the genre.

Past studies of Anglo-Saxon outlawry have been undertaken primarily by historians and have been mostly based upon the evidence of legal codes, which is essentially

prescriptive evidence in the sense that the laws set forth what should ideally be happening in the kingdom. Although more recent work on Anglo-Saxon legal procedure has begun to turn to the descriptive evidence to be found in letters, charters, chronicles, and similar documents that provide a broader look at the actual application of the legal prescriptions (Wormald,

“Charters”; Keynes, “Fonthill”), there has still been very little attempt to look at the narrative accounts of outlaws in the Anglo-Saxon period as stories. By looking primarily at narrative sources, I intend in this chapter to illuminate the remnants of an Old English outlaw hero storytelling tradition, to demonstrate how a knowledge of that tradition can usefully aid our reading of Old English literature, and also to lay the groundwork for looking at the most extended collection of outlaw narratives growing out of the Anglo-Saxon period, those surrounding the eleventh century outlaw Hereward.

To study the documents of Anglo-Saxon outlawry we must first divorce ourselves from our twentieth century conceptions of what outlawry means. The fact that the term utlah

[outlaw] entered the English language in the Anglo-Saxon period and has been in common use since then makes it easy for us to mistakenly apply twentieth century conceptions of the word’s meaning to its use in the seventh through the eleventh centuries. It is helpful, as a corrective, to remember that the Anglo-Saxon period was a time when there was no police force, but when all citizens had to be placed under the authority of some responsible lord or family group that would bear the costs of misbehavior on the part of a member. Participation in the daily life of the society, even down to the means of obtaining the necessities of life, usually required membership in some such group. Laws and customs encouraged suspicion of outsiders. Under these circumstances, outlawry, the placing of a person outside of the protection of a legal kinship or lordship group, was as harsh a sentence as the society could pass short of death. In one sense it was even harsher than capital punishment, for it deprived the descendants and dependants of the outlaw from inheriting his property. I It meant the total destruction of everything that identified people as human beings: their social rank, their membership in their kinship group, their ability to either receive or pass on hereditary property to their children. Outlawry was meant to effectively expunge a person from the culture. We must appreciate how completely an outlaw was supposed to be cut off and what that might mean for the common person before we can understand the nature of the outlaw narratives that survive, and why in the late Anglo-Saxon period stories begin to appear in which outlaws could and did become heroes.

The place to begin such an examination remains the legal codes, for they offer the clearest depiction of the consequences of outlawry, and thus a model for interpreting the narratives. Outlawry in the Anglo-Saxon period, as a legal concept embodied in the laws of the period, has been surveyed by Felix Liebermann in his “Die Friedlosigkeit bei den

Angelsachsen” (1910) and in the glossary entry on “friedlos” to his monumental Gesetze Per

Aneelsachsen (1903-1916). Liebermann’s theorizing about the earliest forms of outlawry has suffered from more recent critiques (see e.g., Goebel), but his examination of the legal practice of outlawry as it is depicted in the law codes remains thorough and on the whole trustworthy.

Although legal historians have theorized that outlawry originated as a punishment exacted within kinship groupings, by the time of its earliest appearances in the Anglo-Saxon law codes (in the seventh-century laws of Ine and the ninth-century laws of Alfred) it was

1 Whether, and to what extent, outlawry applied to women is a question that cannot be answered definitively, but it seems doubtful that it did. There is no record of it having been applied to them in the Anglo-Saxon period, and Liebermann cites Middle English law that excludes women from becoming outlaws (Gesetze. Gloss. 7). It also seems that outlawry was not used against slaves, but was reserved for free men. 3 already a weapon wielded principally by the monarch. County courts had the right to outlaw, but later medieval records indicate that this right came to mean only that they

pronounced the sentence delivered to them by royal authority. Before about 997, when

Æthelred broadened the reach of outlawry, a man declared an outlaw was outlawed only within his own county. The significance of this can be quickly grasped by a glance at Hill’s

Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England where it is clear that a journey of ten to twenty miles would put one well into the next county. Such limits on the power of outlawry are likely a reflection of the earlier history of the sentence when it had principally to do with being cast out of one’s kinship group. The limited range of outlawry presented problems for the king’s use of it as a political weapon later, though, for a dangerous enemy of the king’s could be outlawed only to be legally harbored a few short miles away by a powerful friend. In a late tenth century legal code, however, Æthelred declared that an outlaw in one county was outlawed in all: “ 7 ælc flyma beo flyma on aelcum lande [3e on anum sy” [And anyone who is an outlaw in one district shall be an outlaw everywhere] (HI Atr. 10). This law was a considerable extension of the monarchy’s power, and only 40 years later Edward the

Confessor used it extensively, most notoriously in his struggles with the house of Godwin fASC. 1051-2).

This new law did not mean, however, that outlaws were no longer given aid and shelter in England. Harboring wanderers was, in fact, an old custom sharply at odds with the suspicious attitude toward outsiders that the law codes themselves openly encouraged. The feelings of this culture about strangers and wanderers can be seen in the ambivalent and often conflicting attitudes revealed when such pairs of Old English poems as Widsith and Deor. or The Seafarer and The Wanderer are examined. The Old English poetic literature

reveals both a fascination with the wandering exile, and a widespread attitude of suspicion

and hostility that contributes to the exile’s despair of ever finding a new home and lord.

Perhaps significantly, the first appearance of outlawry in the existing laws is not a statement

about when the law should be applied, but a late seventh century statement of the

punishments that commoners and noblemen were to suffer for harboring outlaws (Ine 30).

The laws addressed themselves to this issue throughout the Anglo-Saxon period with such frequency that the majority of references to outlaws in the legal codes are warnings not to harbor them. Such emphasis would not have been necessary if harboring had not been a serious and ongoing problem. The charters provide corroborating evidence of the continuing struggles kings had with people harboring outlaws. The tradition of tribal loyalties and allegiance to kin often proved stronger than loyalty to the crown. For instance, not long after

Leofsige, ealdorman of Essex, was outlawed for killing the king’s high reeve (ASC 1002E), his sister, Æthelflæd, forfeited her property for ignoring his outlawry and aiding him, according to a charter from the period (Wormald, “Handlist” 264: 75). There are numerous such instances in the wills and charters from the Anglo-Saxon period, indicating that the problem resisted solution by legal fiat.

Once King Æthelred had declared outlawry to be universal throughout the kingdom, the terms applied to an outlaw began to have phrases appended to them like “against the king” [utlah wiô Gone cyng (II Can. 3 la.2)] or “against God and man” [utlaga wiô God & wiô men (II Can. 39)] that emphasized the comprehensive nature of the outlawry and provided it with an air of greater legitimacy. The next step in consolidating the power of outlawry in the king’s hands was made by Cnut, who declared “Se ôe utlages weorc gewyrce

5 weald se cyng ôæs fnôes” (II Can. 13) [If anyone does the deed of an outlaw, the king alone shall have the power to grant him security (Robertson)]. The Latin in one ms adds: “pacis emendatio in solius regis consistât imperio” [The restoration of favor rests in the office of the king]. With the creation of this law, a kingdom-wide outlawry could only be reversed by the king (Liebermann, “Friedlosigkeit” 17). This extension of the power of outlawry marked a considerable extension of the king’s authority as well, and the strengthening of one of his principal weapons against political enemies.

The changes in the institution of outlawry that I have outlined above necessarily mean that any general description of its practical consequences is far from being authoritative for any particular time or instance. Nevertheless, such a description may prove helpful in dispelling modem preconceptions about outlawry. Legal scholars have described outlawry in the Anglo-Saxon period in a variety of sometimes conflicting ways.

Liebermann, the principle authority on the subject, provides a list of crimes for which one might have been outlawed in his “Friedlosigkeit bei den Anglo-Saxon” (31-2). His list is derived almost completely from the legal codes themselves and covers a wide variety of transgressions. For our purposes it is sufficient to note that the crimes can be divided into two classes: serious crimes such as murder (i.e., botleas crimes),^ and crimes by which a person makes himself unable to operate within the system of law as it then existed: for example by breaking an oath, refusing to recognize the authority of the Hundred, or by not having a lord who would provide surety for his conduct. This latter situation meant that a lordless wanderer was effectively an outlaw wherever he went, as he was outside of the legal system of any people among whom he came unless someone accepted him as his man. This,

2 Crimes for which monetary compensation would not be accepted. 6 however, meant taking legal responsibility both retro- and proactively for all the stranger’s

actions, a serious consideration that probably left many unable to find a new lord. Flight

from justice was another action that would most likely result in outlawry, and so outlawry

could be a secondary consequence of a whole host of other offenses. Outlawry could result,

then, from a civil offense, but it is important to note that it is not the civil offense itself that

was outlawable, but rather subsequent acts of disobedience to the court. Thus, while a civil

offense would not normally result in outlawry, repeated refusal to appear before the court to

answer for a civil charge, or outright flight from the court’s reach, could end with outlawry.

Jolliffe, in his Constitutional Historv of Medieval England, asserts that outlawry was

at first reserved for the worst offenses, those done within a protective grouping, such as

slaying of kin, or betrayal of a lord (107-8). However, “by the tenth century it had come to

be a common process of coercive procedure, and a penalty for many offenses of violence...

Even civil offenses, such as refusal to attend the hue and cry, were outlaw’s work if habitual”

(108). When outlawry moved from the hands of the county courts to the king, as it did

finally when Cnut claimed for himself the sole privilege of revoking outlawry and recast the

whole issue as breaking the king’s peace, it finally became a potent weapon of the

centralized government (Jolliffe 108).

When a man was outlawed all of his property was seized and he was banished

(Liebermann, Gesetze. Gloss. 1 Ib&c). He might also be excommunicated from the church

(Liebermann, “Friedlosigkeit” 35; see also Keynes 87). All legal protection was removed from the outlaw, so that he might be killed with impunity by anyone who met him;3 and

3 It is often added that in this the outlaw is like the wolf, and that outlaws were said to "bear the wolfs head" (see for instance Bryce Lyon, A Constitutional and Legal Historv of Medieval England. New York: Harper and Row, 1960,100). The evidence for the legal and 7 conversely anyone who tried to aid him would suffer punishment as well, as we saw above in the case of EthelflFd. Liebermann, citing Norman laws, says that children who were raised

by an outlaw before his banishment were not outlawed themselves nor did they lose their

inheritance, but the evidence of the charters and chronicles does not generally appear to support this for the Anglo-Saxon period (Gesetze. Gloss. 15 and “Friedlosigkeit” 15). It is quite possible that in Anglo-Saxon England outlawry resulted in children inheriting no property from their father at all. Liebermann further asserts that outlawry often meant the dissolution of marriage, at least up until about the tenth century when the church grew powerful enough that its disapproval of this practice was codified into law (“Friedlosigkeit,”

36; Gesetze. Gloss. 15b); however, the evidence he cites for this comes only from notoriously difficult Old English poems which have long been a focus of critical controversy.

Goebel summarizes the outlaw’s state by citing Brunner (1925), who says the outlaw,

ceases to exist in the law as kinsman, husband or father. Neither his sib nor his near family can protect him or harbor him. His property is exposed to waste or forfeiture. His house is destroyed by breach or firebrand, the work of his hands is annihilated. His possessions are forfeited, i.e. taken over by public authority to which they lapse in so far as the injured party is not satisfied out of them. ( 8 n.S)

Outlawry could be temporarily suspended by asylum (Liebermann, Gesetze. Gloss. 17e), thus giving the outlaw an opportunity to petition the king through an advocate in an attempt to be inlawed. The law codes and charters indicate that bocland — that is, property owned outright by the outlaw — was to go to the king, and land that had been leased from others was to be returned to its owners. However, documents also indicate that these rules were not

literary link between outlaws and wolves has been seriously challenged by E.G. Stanley in his article, "Wolf, My Wolf!"

8 always strictly followed (Keynes 85). As we shall see, when a person was outlawed it often led to legal battles over the ownership of the land involved.

Bronislaw Geremek, in an essay surveying the study of marginal figures in medieval society in general, observed that when we rely on legal records “our information refers more to legal norms than to persons” (353). Scholars have also assumed that since the records of the Middle Ages are largely those of the ruling classes they can tell us little about the thoughts and customs of the people at large. Geremek has asserted that “Marginal figures have left few traces in historical documentation,” and that “when they do appear it is above all in the archives of repression, thus in a reflected image that shows the anxiety and the hatred of organized society as well as its justice” (353). In the records of the Anglo-Saxon period, however, we are fortunate to have local sympathies and attitudes frequently expressed. This is true even of an official history such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, thanks to its dispersion in various versions around the kingdom. An examination of the accounts of outlaws in these chronicles can reveal the narrative patterns of the outlaw-hero stories, and the differing treatment the outlaw story receives when the protagonist is not depicted heroically. They can also help to highlight the historical development of a more centralized use of outlawing that concentrated power in the king’s hands rather than those of local lords or kinship groups, a fact that exerted considerable influence upon the narrative tradition.

Critical attention has recently been drawn beyond the prescriptive law codes, which in the past have absorbed the bulk of scholarly attention, to the descriptive records of Anglo-

Saxon law. Patrick Wormald’s “A Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Lawsuits” and in-depth studies such as Simon Keynes’ “The Fonthill Letter” have provided us with new evidence as well as new ways of looking at old evidence. The Fonthill letter, as descriptive evidence, is unique

9 in being a piece of testimony submitted by an ealdorman during an ongoing land dispute.

The letter details an earlier controversy surrounding the property, including the outlawry of its previous owner and the effect of this upon the current property disputes. As such it is a valuable piece of evidence for how the law was put into practice and shows us some of the practical ramifications of outlawry.

The Fonthill letter was sent in the early tenth century by Ealdorman Ordlaf to King

Edward the Elder in order to settle a property dispute arising after the outlawry of his godson, Helmstan. The letter demonstrates how the rights to an outlaw’s property were often far from clear and unambiguous. The case begins with Helmstan’s first conviction for theft, which resulted only in a fine for him. However, a conviction in court could weaken a man’s ability to protect himself in future court cases by laying a greater burden of proof upon him; his word would be suspect and he might even be denied the oath. As Simon Keynes points out in his study of the Fonthill letter, this was the case for Helmstan. His property was not confiscated and he was not outlawed, but his weakened legal standing brought on a rush of claims against his land. Ordlaf complains of this to King Edward the Elder: “Da Helmstan

5a undæde gedyde ôæt he Æôeredes belt forstæl, ôa ongon Higa him specan sona on mid oôran onspecendan 7 wolde him oôflitan ôæt lond” [When Helmstan committed the crime of stealing Æthelred’s belt, Higa at once began to bring a charge against him, along with other claimants, and wished to win the land from him by litigation] (Keynes 64). If a flurry of litigation over the rights to land could be expected after a conviction for theft, one can imagine how much controversy an outlawry, where the land was forfeited and potentially up for grabs, could incite. The major claimant to the land in this case, Ethelhelm Higa, was a

10 persistent source of trouble for Ordlaf and Helmstan. When Helmstan was later convicted of another theft, and subsequently outlawed, Higa once again laid claim to the property. In the meantime, though, Helmstan and Ordlaf had taken steps to strengthen their claim to the land by having Helmstan sell it to Ordlaf, who loaned it back to him. Exasperated by the repeated lawsuits of Higa and others, Ordlaf asks the king, “ 7 leof, hwonne biô engu spæc geendedu gif mon ne maeg nowôer ne mid feo ne mid aôa geenigan?” [And, Sir, when will any suit be closed if one can end it neither with money nor with an oath?] (Keynes 76).

That lands could go astray in ways other than through lawsuits is apparent from the documents of the period. II Canute 13 says of the outlaw “ 7 gyf he bocland habbe, sy ])aet forworht dam cynge to hande, sy ôæs mannes man ôe he sy” [And if he has land held by title-deed, it shall be forfeited into the hands of the king without regard to the question whose vassal he is (Robertson)]. Yet an overzealous reeve, acting in the king’s name, might claim for the king lands that had only been leased by the outlaw from another, or a powerful local landholder might claim ownership of lands that were in fact the outlaw’s book lands, and therefore should have passed to the king (Keynes 85). Conflicts between powerful local ealdormen and the reeves, who represented the king’s interests, were common. One tenth century charter of King Æthelred tells of a conflict between Ealdorman Leofsige of Essex and a reeve “dear and precious” to the king (Kemble 1289). Several years later this same ealdorman was outlawed when he killed the king’s “high reeve” (ASC I002E). Ordlaf gives us a glimpse of the potential for conflict between the authority of the reeve and the interests of the local ealdormann when he discusses what happened to the property upon Helmstan’s outlawry: “Da swaf Eanulf Penearding on—wæs gerefa—ôa genom eal ôæt yrfe him on ôæt

II he ahte to Tyssebyrig. Da ascade ic bine hwy he swa dyde,. . [Then Eanwulf Penearding, who was the reeve, intervened, and took from him all the property that he owned at Tisbury.

I then asked him why he did so...] (Keynes 80). It seems unlikely that the ealdormann would not have known about his godson’s outlawry, so his questioning of the reeve probably reflects his concern that lands held by Helmstan not fall into the wrong hands, for by now

Helmstan was holding lands on lease from Ordlaf himself. These issues of property are a prominent feature, as we will see, in outlaw narratives throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, and remained so in outlaw-hero stories throughout the Middle Ages.

Keynes, in remarking that Helmstan was outlawed and not executed as thieves sometimes were, says “perhaps Helmstan had been spared a worse fate because he had friends in high places, or perhaps his sentence was intended to be a fate worse than death.

Unlike death, however, outlawry was not irreversible” ( 8 8 ). While it is true that outlawry was reversible and death is not, there is some evidence that of the two punishments outlawry may have been considered the worse. Ordlafs own term for what happens to Helmstan as a result of his theft is that he was forwearà, a word suggesting complete annihilation (Keynes

78). Certainly it does not suggest that Helmstan got off easy. The Anglo-Saxon translation of the Psalter offers further evidence of the seriousness with which this sentence was regarded. In the Paris Psalter. Ps. 77:37, “nolde hi to flymum gedon” [he will not cause them to be made outlaws] translates “et non disperderent,” indicating, as did Ordlafs choice of words, that to be declared an outlaw is equivalent to being utterly destroyed (Liebermann,

“Friedlosigkeit” 33). It should also be remembered that an outlawed man was unable to pass his property on to his children, while an executed criminal’s family did not necessarily lose

12 their Inheritance. Thus, in terms of property loss, it was a greater tragedy for the family to have a member outlawed than to have one executed.

The term utlah [outlaw] itself was borrowed from the Scandinavian invaders and first appears in early eleventh century legal codes (Edward & Guthrum 6 .6 ). The native Old

English term most commonly used for outlawry was flyman, that is, one who is in flight.

Rather than expressing the legal state of the criminal, as utlah did, flyman expressed the criminal’s current status with regard to the community, that he was in flight from his society.

It is also true that many people were declared outlaws when they repeatedly failed to appear in court, and hence were considered in flight from justice, although they may never have actually left their homes. This etymology has lead many scholars to assume that outlawry was a punishment reserved for cases when a criminal was in flight. Thus Liebermann thought it was a random exception when charter or chronicle accounts indicated that a captured or capturable criminal was outlawed rather than given some other punishment; he felt that outlawry was principally reserved for those who had fled from their punishment

(“Friedlosigkeit” 32). There is a fair amount of evidence, however, to suggest that outlawry was a criminal procedure used not infrequently in cases other than flight. As we noted above, II Can. 13 says “Se ôe utlages weorc gewyrce weald se cyng ôæs friôes” [If anyone does the deed of an outlaw, the king alone shall have the power to grant him security]. This reference to doing outlaw’s work might mean only fleeing, but could also imply that there were deeds specifically resulting in outlawry. From the time of William the Conqueror there is a legal code suggesting that there were specific charges involving outlawry that were commonly refuted in court. This would clearly not be the case if outlawry resulted only from flight.

13 Æt eallan utlaga [)ingan se cyng gesette, J)aet se Englisca ladige hine mid irene. §1. 7

gif se Englisca beclypaô Frencisne mid utlagan {singan 7 wille hit jjonne on him gesoôian, se Fraencisca bewerie hine mid omeste. (Liebermann, Gesetze. Wm lad.3)

[And in all charges involving outlawry the king has decreed that the Englishman shall clear himself by the ordeal of iron. §1. And if the Englishman brings a charge involving outlawry against a Frenchman, and desires further to prove it against him, the Frenchman shall defend himself by combat.]

It is clear that if the accused are present to defend themselves either by combat or the ordeal, then they are not in flight. Thus it seems likely that there were charges that resulted in outlawry even without flight. Finally, we can see from the account that Ordlaf gives of

Helmstan’s trial that in actual practice people were declared outlaws even when they were not in flight. Helmstan was apparently present in court when his outlawry was declared, for the scratches he got on his face during the getaway from his theft were entered as evidence against him. Even as early as the time of Edward the Elder, then, outlawry could be invoked in situations other than the flight of a suspected or convicted felon. It might be, as

Liebermann asserts, that cases such as this one were anomalies, but since so few fully described cases of outlawry survive (see Wormald’s “Handlist”) it is little more than guesswork to assert that they were exceptions to the general rule on the basis of the Anglo-

Saxon evidence.

Liebermann has also been criticized for the broad range of terms he correlates with outlawry. Goebel complained that Liebermann did not distinguish among “words merely descriptive of flight, words imposing death sentence, words implying loss of royal favor, and words where some sort of process or judicial sentence (i.e. exile) is indicated” (419n.289).

In an attempt to clarify Liebermann’s terms, he continues.

Excluding the vague chronicle references, Domesday and other Anglo- Norman sources, the doom references show three distinct legal concepts 14 which cannot be lumped together as manifestations of outlawry: I) the process upon flight... ; 2 ) exile, i.e., not process, since flight is not involved but punishment... ; 3) loss of the king’s grace, (p. 419-20, n. 289)

Certainly it is true that technical distinctions might be made among these, but more in theory than in practice, and not with any assurance. The laws themselves are notable for their fluidity in the use of terms, and the ways that these terms were used interchangeably in the narrative accounts of exile and outlawry reinforce the impression that clear distinctions were not a widespread concern. This impression is strengthened by a consideration of the vocabulary surrounding outlawry.

Old English terms for outlawry included utlah (which is a Norse loan fliema',^ wreccena (Alf. 4; Liebermann, Gesetze. Gloss. U);frideleas (Liebermann, Gesetze. Gloss.

1); nithing fASC 1049C); utlendisc; butan (Liebermann, œ Gesetze. Gloss, li); and several

“loss-of-friendship” formulas that are synonymous with outlawry (Liebermann, Gesetze.

Gloss. IP), such as "(ge)fah wiô ôone cyng j wiô ealle his freond” [An enemy to the king

and all his friends] (II Ats. 20.7) or “ôolige ealles {jaes he age 7 ure ealra freondscipes”

[forfeiting all that he possesses and the friendship of us all] (II Ats. 25.2). These loss-of- friendship formulas serve to emphasize how outlawry was reconstituted as a breach of the king’s peace in later Anglo-Saxon England, and thus was brought more fully under royal control. The semantic complexity of outlawry in Old English does not end here, however.

Liebermann and others have noted it is related to such similar legal concepts as exile.

4 Fliema occurs more seldom after 1060 in legal language, and vanishes in the 12th century (Liebermann, Gesetze. Gloss. Ig). The word does live on into Middle English, though, in the form fleme, where its use broadens to mean to flee, to run away, or even to reject (see the OED "Fleme"). The last use listed in the OED is by Scott in his Lav of the Last Minstrel, were the legal term fliemanfeorme. used originally for the crime of harboring outlaws, becomes instead "flemen's-firth," in a description of a tower that they shelter in. 15 excommunication, and even pilgrimage (Liebermann, Gesetze. Gloss., and “Friedlosigkeit”

35; Trehame 189-99). When we consider that the winleas wrecca in the elegies may well have been indistinguishable in the popular imagination from the freondleas flyman or outlaw, then it becomes clear that Goebel’s complaints of inexactitude in the usage of terminology, while important from a legal-historical standpoint, are actually counterproductive to understanding the depictions of outlaws in Anglo-Saxon narratives where fluidity in the usage of terms is an important literary device.

For the purposes of popular storytelling about people cast out of society, it seems likely that medieval peoples used a taxonomy different from the formal one of the law court, so that what is more relevant for us here than the legal technicalities of Anglo-Saxon laws are the ways in which these terms were used and understood by people other than kings and legal experts. In his essay “The Marginal Man,” Bronislaw Geremek argues that the Middle

Ages took a very spatial view of marginality, in which people such as “the excluded, criminals and outlaws, protesters, heretics, and dissidents” were separated out from a

“center” formed by family or other social groupings (352). A like division was applied to the human race at large in its relations to God, “where the ranks of the ‘different’ were filled by monsters, savages, pagans, and infidels” (352). The applicability of this observation to

Old English writers is demonstrated by the blending of the secular concepts of exile and outlaw with the religious ones of excommunicant and monster that we see, for instance, in the Anglo-Saxon legal codes, in the stories of outlaws I will examine below, and in the depiction of Grendel in Beowulf. In the latter, for instance, Grendel is characterized with a vocabulary that describes him as an outlaw as well as a monster and a child of Cain. An expression used for exiles and outlaws in the legal codes, “an enemy of the king and all his

16 friends” \gefah w/ôàone cyning w/ô j ealle his Jrynd] (II Edm 1.3), is applied to Grendel, who is called “an enemy of God” [fag wiQ God\ (81 Ib). Similarly, the phrases utiah wiQ

God [an outlaw with God] or godes utlagan occur in the legal codes of Æthelred and Cnut for those who are excommunicated (V Atr. 42, VIII Atr. 42; Can. 1020 17), and suggest that the Anglo-Saxons readily analogized one state by another. This tendency to conjoin terms for exile, outlawry, and excommunication suggests that we can expect little of the sort of distinct use of terms that a legal historian might like to see, especially in Anglo-Saxon narratives and poetry.

What Goebel dismisses as “vague chronicle references” are exactly the kinds of examples that might provide us with clues as to how a medieval reader of Anglo-Saxon literary productions would understand the appearance of terms like utlah, flyman, or wrœcca in a work. The question of how the legal practice of outlawry was encoded into narratives has been neglected in the study of Anglo-Saxon outlawry. The few abbreviated tales that have been preserved in documents, most notably in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, make it clear that outlaw narratives were indeed being told in the late Anglo-Saxon period. Together with the more fragmentary accounts that can be gleaned from charters and other documents, these materials shed light not only on how outlawry was put into practice, but also how that practice was incorporated into both popular and official narratives.

In a charter from the mid tenth century there is an account of a land transfer between

Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester and one Wulfstan Uccea (Kemble 591). The previous history of the property is recounted in the document, where we learn that a widow and her son held the land until they were discovered to be witches. The father of Wulfstan, it is

17 asserted, was the victim of these witches, who had stuck a pin into him. This was proved when “man teh {laet morô forô of hire inclifan” [the deadly thing was dragged from her chamber]. This rather cryptic reference is usually taken to mean that some kind of doll, intended for use in witchcraft, was found with pins stuck into it. The widow was taken to

London Bridge and drowned, and the son escaped and was outlawed. As commonly happened to the land owned by an outlawed person, this estate then passed into the hands of the king, who gave it to Wulfstan’s father, the injured party. It was then transferred to

Bishop Æthelwold. This relatively insignificant transfer takes on deeper tones when we see that this same property, the estate at Ailsworth, is listed in the Peterborough version of the

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 963 among the estates with which King Edgar, at Bishop

Æthelwold’s urging, endows the newly resuscitated Peterborough abbey. This endowment of lands was crucial in forming the base from which Peterborough would grow to be an important religious and cultural center in the late Anglo-Saxon period.

When we see that this local scuffle is actually a key part of a land deal of great local significance, we are led to suspect that the woman and her son, apparently lacking family or other supporters who would stand up for them, were a hindrance to plans made at the highest ecclesiastical and political levels and never stood any real chance of asserting their rights to the coveted estate. The legal codes said that those declared witches must repent and do penance with special zeal, or else deny the accusation with the ordeal. If these options were not taken, then they were to be excommunicated (I Edm 6 ), or driven from the land or utterly destoyed (Ed. & Guth. 11). Death is only specifically called for when the witchcraft has resulted in a death (II Ats. 6 ). No death resulted from this alleged witchcraft, but the two accused in this charter do not appear to have been given any options, and this summary

18 treatment of them despite the non-fatal nature of the crime does suggest a desire on the part of their accusers to get them out of the way as rapidly and completely as possible. As they were unimportant people who held an important piece of land, it is quite possible that the charges against them were specifically calculated to deprive them of their property.

This interpretation of these events is further supported by assertions made in chronicles from the monastery at Ely, another monastic house that was endowed by Bishop

Æthelwold. Susan Ridyard has noted that “the Libellas and the Liber Eliensis preserve a vivid and not altogether attractive picture of St. Æthelwold as a shrewd and successful businessman who worked with the backing of an acquiescent king and an acquisitive saint”

(192). She cites evidence that Æthelwold was known to force landholders to turn their property over to him for the benefit of his newly endowed abbeys (187 n.51). Other records indicate that instances of the more powerful seizing lands from the less powerful, especially widows, might not have been an uncommon occurrence. A charter from the time of King

Æthelred details the actions of Ælfric Cild, who seized lands from the widow Eadfled.

These lands were later returned to her by the king when Ælfric was outlawed for treason

(Kemble 1312). In the case of the widow and son at Ailsworth, there was no such happy ending. They were not given the opportunity to defend themselves in a court, and at a time when courts were infamous for showing partiality there is little likelihood that they could have refuted the charges of their powerful enemies even if they were false.

Complaints of judicial partiality occur throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, and as outlawry came to be a familiar political weapon it was not uncommon for those with little power to find themselves placed outside the protections of the law by a sentence of outlawry.

Records from later in the medieval period indicate that outlawry was an extremely common

19 outcome once serious charges were brought. The expectation that a trial would go against one, whether for political or judicial reasons, encouraged flight. Pollock and Maitland cite statistics drawn from thirteenth century records indicating that 65 to 90 percent of the serious criminal cases brought before the courts resulted in outlawry declared upon flight (11.557).

Numbers this high suggest that flight was preferable to trial, even with the disastrous results of outlawry. As we shall see, those with enough power, or as in the case of Helmstan powerful friends such as Ealdorman Ordlaf, had some chance of winning re-instatement to society at least, if not to their former position. But lacking the resources that an ealdormann or an earl (even an outlawed earl as we shall see) could muster, these outlaws and those who sympathized with them had little opportunity for redress once their sentences were pronounced.

Although the accounts of small-time outlaws like these demonstrate the common operations of outlawry on an individual level, their narratives are not the ones that have survived in the chronicles and inspired the surviving outlaw legends. Instead it is the men who were public figures before being outlawed who dominate the outlaw-hero stories from the Anglo-Saxon period. These stories show similar narrative structures, suggesting perhaps the influence of a popular tradition of outlaw storytelling. As we shall see, these stories demonstrate a repeated narrative pattern in which a man is outlawed (presumably unjustly), followed by exile and the gathering of troops by the outlaw, which leads to armed rebellion against the king, and finally to restoration of the outlaw’s rights and possessions. This fairly simple sequence forms the pattern for the outlaw hero tale in the chronicles of the Anglo-

Saxon period.

20 In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle account from 1051, in the midst of the growing conflict between the house of Godwin and King Edward, the king summoned his witan and outlawed one of Godwin’s sons:

l>a ne onhagode him to cumenne to wider male ongean |}one cyng y agean ))one here jje him mid waes. For da on niht awæg. y se cyng haefde J)æs on morgen witena

gemot, y cwæd hine ut lage y call here, hine y ‘ealle’ his suna; y he wende sud to I>om ege, y his wif y Swegen his suna. y Tostig y his wif, Baldwines mage aet

Brycge; y Gerd his suna (1052D [1051])

[Then it did not suit him [Godwin] to come to meet the king and the host that was with him in order that his counter-plea should be heard. He fled away by night, and the following morning the king held a meeting of his council, and proclaimed him an outlaw, and all his host, him and all his sons. And he went south to Thomey [Thomey Island off the coast of Sussex] with his wife and Swein, his son, together with Tostig and his wife, who was a kinswoman of Baldwin of Bruges, and Gurth, his son. (Garmonsway 175)]

This is a revealing account, showing us outlawry as it was used among the king and his nobles. The king, with the force of his witan behind him, outlaws Godwin’s son Swein.

Godwin, like the widow’s son discussed above, knowing that he could expect little sympathy from a court, chooses to flee. Immediate outlawry is the result. However, when Godwin and his sons subsequently gathered troops abroad and returned with enough force to threaten the king, Godwin’s popularity was great enough that people flocked to join his troops (Barlow

119-122). Civil war was averted only when the king’s counselors, his witan, persuaded him to inlaw and fully restore the Godwins. When the two sides meet and Godwin is inlawed, the usually concise Anglo-Saxon Chronicle pauses over the scene to reiterate the restoration of the Godwins’ lost property:

y man sealde Godwine claene his eorldom swa full swa forô swa he fyrmest ahte. y his sunum eallu eall {jaet hy ær ahton. y his wife y his dohtor, swa full y swa forô swa

21 hi ahton; y hi faestnedon {la fuine freondschipe hecm betweonan. y allum folce fulie lagubeheton. (1052D)

[and Godwine's earldom was restored to him without reservation, as fully and as completely as ever he possessed it, and to all his sons all that they had possessed, and to his wife and to his daughter as fully and completely as they had possessed; and the council ratified complete friendship between them, and made a promise of effective laws for the whole nation. (Garmonsway 181)].

Not only is Godwin’s property restored, but the property of his sons and retainers, and the property of his wife and daughter are too. This kind of three-fold repetition suggests a concern over property that not only recalls the account of the witch and her son, but also illustrates an important element of outlaw narratives in the Anglo-Saxon period; namely that these stories often focus upon issues of forfeiture and restoration of property even more than legal rights. Thus, while there is some consideration given to the justice or injustice of the treatment the outlaw has suffered, nevertheless, the focus remains upon his property - in particular the land - and what becomes of it. As we will see, this is a driving issue in the

Hereward cycle of outlaw legends as well.

When Godwin and his family are restored to their lands and full rights, it is the king who is the instrument of their inlawing. The Peterborough (E) Chronicle says, “ y se cyng

forgeaf ]jam eorle y his beamum his flilne freondscype 7 fulne eorldom y eall [let he ær ahte y eallon jjam mannon jje him mide wæron” (1052 E). [And the king took the earl and his children back into favour, and gave him back the whole of his earldom, and restored to him and all his supporters everything they had previously owned (Garmonsway 183).] The power of the king alone to in-law is repeatedly stressed in the later Old English legal codes and narratives alike.

22 Although the English kings apparently strove to make outlawing more a prerogative of the crown, it had not wholly become so even by the late Anglo-Saxon period. The E version of the Chronicle under 1064 (actually 1065) gives one example of outlawry originating from the people themselves rather than the king: “Her on {)isum geare foron

Norôhymbra togædere 7 utlagodon heora eorl Tostig.” [In this year the people of

Northumbria came together and outlawed their earl, Tostig.] Several versions of the

Chronicle tell the story of Earl Tostig of Northumbria’s outlawry at the hands of his own people, and against the wishes of the king who sent Tostig’s brother Harold to try to mediate.

When the king found the situation was beyond mediation he granted the people’s wish that

Morcar might be their earl, and reinstated the laws of Cnut. Tostig was forced to leave

England in exile. Frank Barlow suggests that the rebellion was not a result of Northumbrian separatism, but an act of protest “to a West-Saxon King against the misrule of a West-Saxon earl” (236). Taking to themselves the power to outlaw was a bold move by the

Northumbrians, especially since that power had by then become largely a prerogative of the king. The outlawing of Tostig was thus a double blow to the authority of the West Saxon monarch. The demand that the laws of Cnut be restored is also significant. It seems likely that Tostig, originally from Wessex, had brought with him West-Saxon laws that he then enforced in Northumbria, and that discontent over this is reflected in the demand for the return to the laws of Cnut. Tostig’s authority was rejected by the Northumbrians, then, in part at least, because that authority was imposed from outside and conflicted with local customs as reflected in the laws of Cnut.

Once in exile, Tostig eventually did what so many outlawed nobles did — he gathered a force and attacked England. His attempt to forcibly reinstate himself was unsuccessful and

23 he died at Stamford Bridge. In none of the chronicle accounts is Tostig presented very sympathetically, not to mention heroically, but then again there is not much room for popular sympathy when a person is cast out of his community by the members themselves. Outlaw stories often grow up around just such conflicts between local rights and external authority as we have here, but unfortunately for Tostig, he was on the wrong side to be cast as a heroic exile. Eric Hobsbawm, in his study of bandits, makes a distinction between social bandits and rogues that is relevant: “Social bandits could be, and were, people of whom their society could be proud. Rogues were heroes only among the marginal and the outcast,... even traditional communities of outsiders ...hesitated to acknowledge them publicly” fBaudits.

148). That is, it is a far different thing to be outlawed by an outside authority, as Godwin the earl of Wessex was, than to be thrown out of your own community, as Earl Tostig of

Northumbria was. The first leaves room for a heroic portrayal and narrative justice as we see in a Chronicle account from 1055.

Earl Ælfgar of East Anglia, stories about whose outlawry are preserved in the C, D, and E version of the Chronicle under the date 1055, was a more popular and successful outlaw than Tostig. Interestingly the C and D versions, providing slightly different details, are in consensus that the earl was outlawed “butan aelcan gylte” [for no reason], or as the D version says more slyly, “fomeh butan gylte” [for nearly no reason]. In both of these stories

Ælfgar bolstered his household troops, who loyally but illegally followed him into exile, with foreign assistance and returned to wreak havoc in England. After destroying the

English troops mustered to meet him,5 the earl proceeded to ransack the countryside. Finally

5 The C version remarks that the defeat was a result of the English being made to fight on horseback, a detail presumably added to diparage such French innovations.

24 King Edward sent men to bargain; as the D version wryly comments, “And {ja ^a hi haefdon mæst to yfele gedon. man gerædde |)one ræd |jæt man Ælfgar eorl geinnlagode. 7 ageaf him

his eorldom. 7 eall [)æt him of genumen wæs.” [And then when they had done most damage, it was decided to revoke the sentence of outlawry against Earl Ælfgar, and to restore him to his earldom and all the possessions of which he had been deprived (Garmonsway 187)].

The chronicles covering the time of Edward the Confessor are unusually full of outlawries. As Frank Barlow has observed, Edward was noted more for banishing and outlawing his opponents than poisoning or assassinating them (80). It is quite probable that

Edward’s ability to successfully use outlawry as a weapon is a direct outgrowth of the strengthening of the royal power that we see in the legal codes under Æthelred and Cnut.

Edward, though faced with internal struggles throughout most of his reign, was able to keep a check on them through the use of outlawry and banishment. Osgod Clapa, Earl Godwin and his sons, Earl Ælfgar, Archbishop Robert of Jumieges and his French followers, and numerous others (including, as we shall see, Hereward) were the victims of outlawry at the hands of Edward and his witan. Tribal loyalties remained strong long after the power of the kingship was consolidated. We can see its effects in the expulsion of Earl Tostig from

Northumbria, in the outlawing of the Normans following Godwin’s return, and in the outlawing of the “Danish kings” following the death of King Swein: “ 7 aefre aelcne

Denisc[n]e cyning utlagede of Engla lande ge cwædon” (1014E) [and they declared every

Danish king outlawed from England for ever (Garmonsway 145)]. Used in cases such as these, outlawry could eliminate a rival, either through indirectly causing his death or by placing him in a position from which he could not fight back effectively. While it is true that

25 political forces behind Edward were applying pressure on him to engage in some of these

outlawings, it remains the case that as king Edward used this weapon to stabilize himself

above the contending factions: “Those who lost his favour, opposed his will, or aroused his

suspicion got short shrift. Edward had no prisons; he was not accused of assassination or

poisoning; he banished and outlawed” (Barlow, 80). And yet, as we can see in the case of

Ælfgar, as outlawry became an increasingly powerful tool in the central government’s

attempts to control resistance and was more widely applied, the outlaw himself became a

popular symbol of active and successful resistance to perceived injustices.

From these chronicle accounts the pattern for the stories of aristocratic outlaws

begins to appear: Godwin, Tostig, and Ælfgar, one after another, return with their loyal

followers and challenge their sentence of outlawry. The Peterborough Chronicle, which is

sympathetic to Ælfgar’s rivals the Godwins, has a version of Ælfgar’s outlawry that openly

rejects Ælfgar as a hero. In its account, as is usually the case, a witena gemot was

summoned, and the earl was outlawed. But this chronicler takes no pains to hide his

antipathy for the earl. After telling us that the earl was outlawed he adds that it was, “forôon

him man wearp on. [)aet he wæs jjes cynges swica. 7 ealra land leoda. 7 he {jæs geanwyrde

wes ætforan eallum jjam mannum [je Jjær ge gaderode wæron. {jeah him J)æt word ofscute his

unn[)ances” [on the charge of being a traitor to the king and the whole nation. He admitted

his guilt before all the men there assembled, although the confession escaped him unawares

(Garmonsway 185-6)]. Later Ælfgar reappears in this chronicle as an earl again, but the

Peterborough version never gives us an account of his triumphant battle with the king’s forces and his inlawing, as the C and D versions do. Instead, the Peterborough chronicler contents himself with noting that together with Gruffydd, King of North Wales, Ælfgar burnt

26 down St. Æthelberht’s cathedral as well as the borough of Hereford. For the Peterborough chronicler Ælfgar is merely an outlaw, and no hero, so that the story of his successful battle for the restoration of his property does not need to be told, and instead he is depicted in a way reminiscent of accounts of viking despoilers. We can therefore learn as much about the heroic portrayal of outlaws in the late Anglo-Saxon period from what is left out of some of the outlaw accounts as from what is included.

The strongly divided opinion on the earl’s guilt and the variety of details presented in the three accounts suggest that the earl’s exploits were likely a theme for popular stories that circulated in a variety of versions. At the least they clearly demonstrate that a heroic outlaw was expected to fight for his lost privileges, and, along with the outlawry of Earl Godwin, show that a sentence of outlawry by the late Anglo-Saxon period did not preclude popular sympathy. If Liebermann and other legal historians are correct that by the late Anglo-Saxon period the power to outlaw had moved largely from the local centers of power to the national ones, then there was more room for the kind of popular sympathy that could create an outlaw-hero tradition. When outlaws were cast out by their own kinship groups it was unlikely that they could gamer the popular sympathy necessary to give them heroic stature, but when outside authority began to step in and outlaw people from the midst of a community, then conditions were ripe for the development of outlaw heroes.

As outlawry became more powerful in the hands of a stronger central government, its use became more political and reached into even local disputes. Patrick Wormald has argued that the role of the Anglo-Saxon kings in legal decision making, especially on the local level, may well have been underestimated by previous scholars. He has found evidence of kings’ willingness to meddle in local politics and issues of land ownership that have previously

27 been considered the realm of local courts. In “Charters, Law and the Settlement of Disputes in Anglo-Saxon England” he cites convincing evidence that the later Anglo-Saxon kings became increasingly involved in local judicial decision making as the power of the state grew. They were willing to arbitrarily dispossess owners of their land for their own political purposes. This accords well with the spirit we see expressed in the chronicle stories sympathetic to the outlaws. Ælfgar is outlawed “for no good reason” and Godwin knows better than to try to state his case to a stacked court. Instead, both turn to more violent and direct means of making their points, and with armies at their backs are able to successfully regain their property.

It might at first seem surprising that powerful outlaws like Godwin and Ælfgar would become popular heroes, as their circumstances differed so greatly from those of the mass of the people. But perhaps that is precisely why their stories had such appeal. For people like the widow and her son, driven from their land without recourse, the bold actions of a Godwin or Ælfgar, outlaws with power enough to challenge the order that outlawed them, were the stuff of daydreams come true. For the masses of powerless people victimized in the law courts such outlaw heroes, who could forcibly strike back against perceived injustice, presented their rebuke to that system. Thus it is that the outlaw heroes from this era seem to have been exclusively from the upper strata of society. As the dominant landholders of the time, they were occasionally the targets of others who schemed to acquire their property and power through having them outlawed. They were also the only ones with enough power and reputation to mount a heroic defence of their property and rights. And even in the short outlaw stories from the Anglo-Saxon period we can see that a forcible defense of property

28 and rights is at the heart of the outlaw-hero narrative, where the willingness, even eagerness,

to settle disputes through battle is rewarded by the outlaw being inlawed a g a i n . 6

The process of inlawing as it might commonly have taken place for a distinctly

unheroic outlaw is preserved for us in the early tenth-century “Fonthill Letter.” As discussed

above, the letter details the events surrounding the outlawing of Helmstan, a thief with

powerful connections. After the trial and outlawing described above, Helmstan is inlawed

by Edward the Elder following a flight to King Alfred’s grave site, where he obtained a seal

of some sort — the significance of which is obscure. Keynes suggests that perhaps Helmstan

swore some sort of oath at King Alfred’s grave and received the seal as proof that he had

done so ( 8 8 ). With this and the intervention of his godfather, ealdormann Ordlaf, Helmstan

is inlawed and retires quietly to an estate granted to him by the king. Unlike the heroic

outlaws Godwin and Ælfgar, Helmstan’s previous estates were not restored. This was likely

the common outcome for those fortunate enough to have their outlawry reversed.

Liebermann noted that several avenues were open for the person who was declared

an outlaw. There were places of temporary asylum that could be sought, and from which a

powerful advocate or someone willing to lend money might be found and the outlawry settled (Liebermann, “Friedlosigkeit” 28). Or the person might flee to another region and take up a new life there. We may presume, then, that the wandering outlaw was not an

unfamiliar figure. We do not have, however, any accounts of the wanderings of those who are unambiguously outlawed before the twelfth century telling of Hereward’s travels in the

6 The ready violence of the outlaw stories, perhaps deriving from the warrior culture in which they developed, remained a prominent element in them throughout the Middle Ages, to the distaste of later scholars. J. C. Holt, for instance, has complained of the "glorification of violence" and the "casual brutality" of the early Robin Hood ballads in his book Robin Hood (10-11). 29 Gesta Herewardi. Nevertheless, we should keep in mind that outlawry shared the same semantic field as exile, excommunication, and even pilgrimage, and therefore the winleas wrecca in the elegies may well have been a figure indistinguishable in the popular imagination from the freondleas flyman or outlaw.

Old English poetry is full of references to exiles and the difficulties that they faced.

The wineleas hcele of the Old English poem The Fortunes of Men (lines 27-33) may well be a picture of just such a character. Immediately preceding the portrait of the captured and executed criminal, it may represent the fate of the criminal who has fled and been outlawed.

A setpiece on the fate of the criminal at large and captured would be consistent with the structure that has been observed in this catalogue poem (Howe, 104-132). Works of Old

English literature, such as the poem The Wanderer, indicate that the exiled (and perhaps outlawed) man was a figure with imaginative appeal. No doubt the laws that warn people not to take in men without first gaining a thorough knowledge of their antecedents were designed to strike at Just this interest in the wandering figure. That wandering outlaws were often successful in evading their enemies is attested by a proverbial saying which asserts

“flema bid gemet” [an outlaw will be captured] as an exceptional stroke of luck

(Liebermann, Gesetze. Gloss. 9f).

Stanley B. Greenfield, in his “The Formulaic Expression of'Exile'" detailed a poetic convention of exile in Old English poetry that emphasized four primary features of exile: status, deprivation, state of mind, and movement in or into exile (201). Much of the subsequent critical discussion of exile has relied on these categories as a way of conceptualizing the depictions of exile and the exiled person in Old English literature.

Drawing on the prose chronicle accounts of outlaws and exiles surveyed above, I will

30 demonstrate how an awareness of the Old English conventions of outlaw-hero storytelling can expand our understanding of the exile convention as it was used in literary narratives.

For the sake of clarity it might be useful to call the exile tradition identified by Greenfield

“elegiac exile” and that which we have seen was common in prose narrative “heroic exile,” since the major difference appears to be that in the latter the exile heroically overcomes his state, while in the former the exile has little or no hope that the wandering will lead to a successful ending. This is not to suggest that these are two independent traditions - merely to indicate that although much of the vocabulary is shared, they present a fundamentally different view of the ends and aims of the exile. Greenfield identified the elegiac-exile convention in a wide variety of Old English poetic works, ranging from the depictions of historical characters such as King Edward in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle poem, to biblical characters such as Abraham and Lot, and to purely fictional characters such as Grendel

(“Formulaic Expression,” 204-5). While a systematic study of the exile convention in Old

English prose, such as that undertaken by Greenfield for the poetry, would profitably extend our knowledge of the uses of the exile trope, I will limit myself here to a demonstration of how an awareness of the exile-hero conventions can aid in our understanding and appreciation of the Old English poem Guth lac A.

Although critics have profitably examined the overlapping meanings of words for heroic and religious exile in other poems,7 the Guthlac A poem has not been seen as a text where the heroic vocabulary of exile and wandering is consistently applied. The reason for

7 See, for example, Michael Chemiss, Ingeld and Christ: Heroic Concents and Values in Old English Christian Poetry (Hague: Mouton, 1972); I. L. Gordon, The Seafarer (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1966) and of course, Stanley B. Greenfield, Hero and Exile (London: Hambledon Press, 1989).

31 this Is that critics have looked exclusively to the elegiac exile poems, in which the protagonist is without hope of a return to his former state, as their model for exile narratives.

In doing so they have neglected to consider the body of traditional heroic-exile narrative in which the hero is actively engaged in winning back his former position, place, and good name. It is this latter kind o f exile narrative that provides the model for the action in Guthlac

A. The traditional theme of a heroic journey through exile not only provides one of the important elements of the poem’s total presentation, but also the framework along which the action of the poem itself advances.

I will not pause for a detailed examination of how Guthlac the hermit is depicted as an exile, merely noting that as an anbuend, a lone-dweller, Guthlac is cut off from the Joys of fellowship, and is constantly engaged in a struggle for a home. Or more accurately, for two homes. The first is the admittedly temporary home of the barrow that he inhabits on

Crowland, and the second is the eternal home foreshadowed in the opening lines of the poem, and which he achieves at the end. Words for home and stability of residence, as

Christopher Jones has recently pointed out, permeate the poem, and as a hermit Guthlac has divorced himself from his worldly home in order to seek a heavenly one. In that process he is figured as an exile.

More interesting are the ways that the poet explores a variety of meanings of exile.

The more familiar figure for a monk is the soldier of Christ, the miles Chhsti, and Guthlac A is well known as an example of the Old English martial vocabulary reworked for Christian purposes. However, recent discussions of the poem have largely ignored the presence of its martial vocabulary in favor of its religious vocabulary. Jane Roberts, in her edition of the

Guthlac poems, pointed out the singularity of the religious vocabulary employed by the

32 Guthlac A poet (50-2). Both Patrick Conner ("Source Studies, the Old English Guthlac A and the English Benedictine Reformation") and Christopher Jones ("Envisioning the

Cenobium in the Old English Guthlac A" ) have explored in recent articles the presence of religious vocabulary in the poem, and especially vocabulary dealing with the monastic life.

Both their articles highlight the relevance of this vocabulary for an interpretation of the poem as a 10th century Benedictine recasting of the 8 th century hermit saint in terms that are in harmony with the goals of the Benedictine revival. What they do not address is why it would be necessary for the poet to stress so heavily the monk’s soldierly qualities if his interest was mainly in presenting Guthlac as a model for the cenobium, the Benedictine monk in the cloister. While it is true that language depicting the monk as soldier is a commonplace that can be found even in Bendict’s Rule, the Guthlac A poet goes far beyond the customary limits of figurative description, presenting us with such a superabundance of martial description that one can almost lose sight of the poet’s figurative use of this language and be tempted into accepting Guthlac as a literal warrior in his demonic temptation scenes. But by stressing this vocabulary, one common to descriptions of exiled warriors and monastic heroes alike, the poet both relates and equates varieties of exilic experience, including monastic exile, and heightens the apparent differences between the exiled warrior and the monk. In doing so, an implicit contrast is set up between the worldly exile, such as that celebrated in the elegies, and the spiritual exile familiar from monastic literature. The poet’s contrasts between the fate of the worldly exile and that of the spiritual exile are made more forcefully when he can present his spiritual exile-hero against a background of heroic exile literature summoned to his audience’s mind by his martial vocabulary. And what monastic hero could be a more fitting subject for this kind of poem than Guthlac, who in his youth was

33 said to be “fired by the brave deeds of heroes” as Orderic Vitalis relates (325), and could himself serve as a model for how that passion for the “brave deeds of heroes” could be turned into ardor for the monastic life? To this we may add that R. M. Wilson in The Lost

Literature of Medieval England cites two twelfth-century references to what may have been a well-known English heroic saga of Guthlac's forebearers (27-8). The first is a reference to a follower of Hereward's named in the Gesta Herewardi. a “Godwin Gille, who was called

Godwin because he was not unequal to that Godwine, the son of Guthlac, formerly celebrated in the songs of the ancients”; and the second is from Orderic Vitalis, where in an acount of Saint Guthlac he remarks that “after eight days the child was baptized and named

Guthlac, that is belli munus, from the tribe they call the Guthlacingas” (Wilson 27-8). Thus the poet’s choice of Guthlac as a figure with which to explore the relations between earthly heroic exile narratives and the spiritual heroics demonstrated in stories of the monastic life, such as that of St. Anthony, fits perfectly with this saint who himself was fired with passion by heroic tales and who turned from the secular pursuits those tales celebrate to a life of holy monastic exile.

The exiled heroic warrior, familiar from the elegiac poetry as well as from Beowulf and elsewhere, first appears before us in Guthlac A in the example of the youthful Guthlac himself. This inclusion of references to Guthlac’s youth in Guthlac A is itself remarkable.

Conner and others have noted that the poem focuses upon the monastic elements of the hero’s life, and that the poet should in this context pause to look back to what is know of

Guthlac’s pre-monastic youth is surprising. We know from Felix’s Life of Guthlac that according to legend Guthlac in his youth lead a body of warriors and spent time in exile among the Welsh, and it is these activities that the poet alludes to. Why would the poet want

34 to take us this far from his apparent topic of celebrating the monastic life? The answer comes from a closer look at the vocabulary of this section of the poem.

It is not always recognized that during his brief attention to the hero’s youth the poet offers a picture of the young warrior as an outlaw. The poet tells us that in his youth,

Guthlac had turned aside from what the poet calls his bleed (a word that is often translated in this poem as meaning his earthly treasures) and instead learned humility. Given the poem’s martial tone, however, it seems better to take bleed to be referring here, as in Beowulf \%h, to the hero’s martial renown, rather than to his earthly treasures (although these concepts are admittedly linked). Thus, the passage

... {jaet he ana ongan beorgsejjel bugan, ond his blaed gode [}urh eadmedu ealne gesealde, ôone [je he on geoguôe bigan sceolde worulde wynnum. (Roberts, 11.10Ib-105a)

[.... so that he began alone to inhabit the barrow place and his renown before God out of humility entirely gave up, that which in his youth he necessarily had been inclining to worldly joys.] suggests that the youthful Guthlac experienced a change of heart that turned him away from a life spent seeking the kind of martial glory that the lofgernost Beowulf sought. This is, of course, a reading that is substantiated by Felix’s prose life (of uncertain relationship with this poem), where greater attention is paid to the saint’s youthful adventures. It also provides an explanation for what the poet calls the many perils, the frecnessa fela, which we are supposed to have heard that Guthlac indulged in:

Hwæt, we hyrdon oft [jæt se halga wer in [je aerestan aeldu gelufade frecnessa fela. (Roberts, 108-110a)

35 [Lo, we have often heard that the holy man in the first period of his life loved many perils.]

Certainly a life of heroic glory exposes one to many perils, as is amply demonstrated

throughout the corpus of Old English poetry. But the temptation scene that immediately

follows this observation about Guthlac raises the possibility that his perils were of a rather

more unusual sort. While Guthlac’s good angel speaks to him of the transitoriness of life

here, emphasizing the stability and rewards to be experienced hereafter by those who “utterly

depart” from the pursuit of worldly rewards, his bad angel says something very different.

Namely,

... {jaet he sceaôena gemot nihtes sohte ond ])urh nejjinge wunne aefter worulde, swa doô wræcmaecgas [la [je ne bimumaô monnes feore [jæs [je him to honda hu[je gelædeô, butan hy [jy reafe raedanmotan. (Roberts, 127b-132)

[that he should criminals seek out at night and by daring strive after worldly gain, as do exiles those who do not care for a man’s life as long as to their hand plunder is brought, if they therefore booty may win.]

I would argue that in this scene we are presented with the conflict between Guthlac’s old and new ways of life. Through his presentation of the young Guthlac’s pursuits of glory and earthly joys, and through his observation that many dangers result from the journey along that track of life, the poet has been building up to the revelation that the young hero’s pursuit of glory finally lead him into the criminal life of an outlaw. We know that Guthlac came from a politically prominent and presumably wealthy family. In fact, Felix tells us that

Guthlac was of royal stock from the Mercian line (Felix, 2-3, 74-5). We have already seen

36 that outlawry was used as a political weapon. There seems to have been some ongoing political turmoil in Mercia at this period, as Osthryth, wife of King Æthelred of Mercia, was murdered by Mercians in 697, and Æthelred himself soon after retired to the monastery at

Bardney, where he became its abbot (Felix 5). His successor, Cœnred, ruled only five years before he too was tonsured in 709. By this time Guthlac was already at his hermitage, for

Felix tells us that it was during Ccenred’s reign that Guthlac was attacked by the British- speaking devils (Felix 108-9). That Guthlac nonetheless remained involved in the political life of Mercia, at least indirectly, is made clear in Felix’s accounts of the aid and comfort the saint gives to Æthelbald, himself a political exile from Mercia who eventually succeeds to the throne. Felix’s life tells us that Guthlac was an exile (in Latin the word is exulabat; the word exul was often used for the English utlah, or outlaw) among the British (Felix 108-

111), and if we may assume that that means political exile, then it is possible that Guthlac was allowed to return from his exile only on the condition that he take the tonsure and renounce all claims to the throne. In that case the alternatives open to him would be the difficult and often lonely life of a hermit saint, or the difficult and often lonely life of an outlawed warrior doomed to live among criminals. These two options are here presented to

Guthlac in their most attractive light by his good and evil angels. It should also be noted that the word used for exile here, wrœcmœgas, is that used in Beowulf 2379b of the sons of

Ohthere, nephews of the Swedish king Onela, who were exiled after Onela usurped their throne, and who sought refuge with Heardred, Hygelac’s son. We therefore have an instance of this word being applied to outlaws of a political nature.

The poet’s presentation of the youthful Guthlac as an outlaw opens up the possibility of bringing together the secular heroic theme of the exile’s wretched life and a depiction of

37 the monastic life as one of heroic exile in the person of Guthlac who experienced both kinds of exile. This permits the poet a more subtle exploration of the meanings of exile than could

be done through simply equating hermit and exile. While Guthlac’s youthful exile does not

play a role in the poem beyond this one section, the devils who visit him throughout are clearly called exiles and described in ways more characteristic of Old English exiles such as the Wanderer, who, the poet says, “travelled the paths of exile” [wadan wræclastas/, than of hellish fiends. The use, then, o f wrœclast by the Guthlac A poet as a description for the demons allows them, once Guthlac is firmly committed to the monastic life, to step in and play the role of the elegiac exile. The travels of the demons, for instance, are described three times as “exile journeys” or wrœcsiôa, as here in lines 508-9: “Gefeoô in firenum, / frofre ne wenaô, // (læt ge wræcsiôa / wyrpe gebiden” (Roberts) [(You) rejoice in crimes / do not believe in grace // so that of your exile-joumeys / you might experience relief]. Indeed, the demons are described as “hleolease hama jjoliaô” [shelterless, lacking a home] (220). Even the very term for the exiles among whom Guthlac spent his youth, wrcecmagas, is applied to these demons three times in Guthlac A. In applying the language of the exile tradition to the demons, the poet again conflates the secular heroic model of exile with the religious concerns of the poem, and implicitly offers the choice of two exiles, that of the holy Guthlac, who, though he is one of those who have, as the poet says, “])as woruld/ uttor laetan” [utterly departed from the world] (125-6), is yet a “tidfara/ to |jam halgan ham” [joumeyer to the holy home] (9-10); or the devils, for whom exile is a permanent state and who might expect no relief. In making the contrast, the poet is drawing us away from a sympathy with the elegiac exile trope, and instead is asking us to identify imaginatively with the heroic, but spiritual exile of the hermit Guthlac. In doing so, and perhaps by drawing on the tradition of

38 political outlaw heroes, he rewrites the hopeless exile of the elegies as a heroic spiritual journey through this life of exile and into one where a true home finally awaits.

It is, ultimately, the aspect of exile as a Journey to a new home that most interests the poet of Guthlac A. Thus there is an emphasis on the features of the exiled state that

Greenfield termed, “deprivation” and “movement in or into exile.” And yet Greenfield’s terms, as do the elegies they are based on, emphasize the mood of loss that permeates much of the elegiac exile poetry, and the hopelessness of the journeying being undertaken. In addition to this literary theme, though, there is, of course, the Old English storytelling tradition about exiles and outlaws who successfully regain their homes and rank that I have demonstrated from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The poet of Guthlac A. 1 would argue, is working with this latter model of exile; one that focuses not just on Greenfield’s “movement in or into exile” but through exile as well. It is the recognition of this movement in the poem that allows us to see that the poem is not “shapeless,” as it has been called, but moves purposefully through a successful exile’s life, after examining and discarding the model of elegiac exile in its portrayal of the youthful Guthlac and the demons.

The poem begins, in its long contested prologue, with an emphasis on journeying from a state of transience to one of permanence. Guthlac is introduced some 93 lines into the poem, and almost immediately we get the passages about his youth we explored a few moments ago. This is followed by a lengthy section relating the battles of the saint and the demons over the barrow and the saint’s resolution to remain a monk. Throughout these battles, the demons are repeatedly depicted as exiles and their travels as exile journeys. The purposive aspect of this journeying is emphasized in the repeated occurence of words for

39 home, buildings, and settlements ~ in short, in the emphasis on the heroic exile’s ultimate goal, the gaining of a permanent home.

In the course of his argument for the relevance of Guthlac A to a cenobitic, as opposed to hermetic, audience, C.A. Jones has pointed out the ways that the vocabulary of building and buildings is stressed throughout the poem. Without pausing to detail the presence of this vocabulary and its uses in particular, I do want to emphasize how it is consistent with the poet’s concern over the state and ends of exile. A person in exile is by definition separated from home. The presence of terms like wrcecsiô [exile journey], or tidfara [a word found only in the Guthlac A poem], emphasize the nature of exile as a journey. That journey, as we are told in the beginning of the poem, is explicitly one towards a home. The opening lines of the poem focus on the “tidfara / to {jam halgan ham” [traveller

/ to the holy home] (Roberts, 9b-10), while at the end, Guthlac is granted a fitting reward for his faithfulness during a life of earthly spiritual and physical exile when, the poet reports.

Him wæs lean geseald, setl on swegle, [jær he symle mot awo to ealdre eardfæst wesan, bliôe bidan. (Roberts, 784b-787a)

[To him was a reward given, a seat in glory, where he might always for ever and ever be firmly established, living in bliss.]

The longing for a settled residence, one that is not transitory, as Guthlac’s good angel stresses that the things of this world are (120a), is a theme that resonates throughout this poem and is woven through its concerns over exile. While the Old English Wanderer must long in vain for a departed lord, with whom there is no hope of reuniting and thus re establishing his home, the Guthlac A poet demonstrates through his exemplar, Guthlac, that

40 the paths of the spiritual exile, undertaken on behalf of a lord who is not transitory results in a home likewise eardfiest, or firmly established. Thus, throughout Guthlac A. the “home” or

“seat” is frequently an object of desire for both the saint and the demons, as it would be for anyone in exile. An important contrast is drawn, though, between the saint who is able to pass through his state of physical and spiritual exile, and the demons who remain permanently in theirs because, as Guthlac tells them, they “‘frofre ne wenaô / jsæt ge wræcsiôa wyrpe gebiden’“ [‘do not believe in grace / so that of your exile-Joumeys you might experience relief] (508-9). The poet thereby demonstrates that the instability of earthly homes and happiness emphasized in the literature of elegiac exile finds its satisfaction in the willing spiritualization of that exile.

When Guthlac moves from a youthful life as an exiled outlaw to embracing the exilic state of the hermit the poet tells us that he “mongum wearô / bysen on Brytene” [comes to be an example for many in Britain] (174b-5a) not only of the paradox that embracing exile is the only way to secure a home, but of the particular kind of exile that one must embrace — one that is devoted to the pursuit of a heavenly, rather than earthly, home. In this way the

Guthlac A poet, in the figure of Guthlac, draws upon narrative traditions and tropes in which the heroic exile actively seeks a return to wealth, good fame, and society, unlike the exiles commonly encountered in the elegiac poetry. And through the depiction of the saint’s exile journey the poem makes the conventions of the heroic exile meaningful for those

Monge sindon geond middangeard hadas under heofonum, [)a |je in haligra rim arisaô

[Many there are throughout middle earth of the ranks of men under heaven who into the saints’ number ascend]. (30-32b)

41 For, as the poet points out,

mæg nu snottor guma sæle brucan godra tida, ond his gæst forô weges willian

[The wise man may now enjoy the happiness of good times, and still for his soul be desirous of the journey [onwards]]. (35-37a)

It is this journey, then, that gives shape and direction to Guthlac A. and the model for this kind of exile is not only that found in the poetry of the elegies, but that found in the storytelling traditions surrounding the Anglo-Saxon outlaws and exiles as reported in the chronicles, who journey in their exile to gather aid and return to fight for their property and rights. Guthlac and the demons, in their struggles over the barrow, both act the part of the heroic exile battling for his land. But in the battle over Guthlac’s eternal home, Guthlac transforms his worldly exile into a spiritual journey, which leaves the demons, unable to match this journey, to wallow in the laments of the hopeless exile. The poet thus distinguishes among exile traditions, and while providing models for each, recasts the life of

Guthlac in the model of the heroic, and successful, exile.

The Guthlac A poet was not the only Old English poet to draw upon the conventions of heroic exile. The themes of heroic exile, again coupled, as above, with the political issues of the period, can be found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle poem commemorating the death of

Edward the Confessor:

Wæs a bliôemod bealuleas kyng, {jeah he lange aer, lande bereafod, wunode wræclastum wide geond eorôan, syôôan Cnut ofercom kynn Æôelredes. (ASPR 11.15-18)

[Ever full of cheer was the blameless king. Though for long in the past, deprived of his land. He had trodden an exile’s path across the wide world, 42 After Cnut had conquered the race of Æthelred. (Garmonsway 1065 C).]

“Full of cheer” is not a description that fits with the tradition of such elegiac exiles as the

Wanderer. But Edward’s cheer comes from his confidence that his claim to the throne will eventually triumph. That triumph is summarized for us by the poet in only one line, but it is a line that evokes the whole range of Anglo-Saxon exiles and outlaws who successfully fought their way back to their rightful place: “Syôôan forô becom freolice in geatwum”

(11.22) [In time he succeeded; noble in armour (Garmonsway)]. The armor (geatwum) suggests, of course, that Edward fought his way back into power, and the freolice assures us that his actions in arms were not mere piratical expeditions, but were in the noble company of other heroes who fought successfully to win back what was rightfully theirs.

That we can see in the Old English Guthlac A and The Death of Edward themes apparently drawn from the kinds of outlaw-hero narratives that I examined above suggests a broad cultural influence of such stories on depictions of exiled heroes, even if we do not have a complete outlaw legend cycle from the Old English period. What we do possess, though, suggests that literary uses of the heroic-exile conventions tend to be invoked in ways that are more specifically politically allusive than the invocations of the elegiac-exile conventions. Thus Old English writers who drew on the language of exile were making use of a more complex range of allusion and tradition than our understanding of exile based solely on the elegies has allowed us to appreciate. The recognition of heroic-exile conventions also enables us to see continuities between the Old English depictions of outlaws and exiles and those written in the centuries following the Norman conquest.

While a larger body of Old English outlaw stories would be invaluable in helping us to trace the varieties and uses of the exile and outlaw in Old English narrative and poetry, it

43 has seldom been recognized that we do have a large body of narrative material about an

Anglo-Saxon outlaw. The cycles of legends about the eleventh-century outlaw Hereward, mostly recorded in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, make up the largest and most diverse body of outlaw legendry from the English Middle Ages. Because that period-defining event, the Norman Conquest, occurred before this outlaw’s legends began to circulate and were finally recorded, the legends of Hereward have not been considered an outgrowth of an

Anglo-Saxon narrative tradition. In the following chapters I will take up the Hereward legends and examine how these stories, primarily from the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, maintained the primary emphases of the Anglo-Saxon narratives on the political nature of the outlaw’s plight, and the overriding concern about the possession and ownership of land even as they refiected the changing society around them and displayed new elements and motifs.

44 BIBLIOGRAPHY

ASC - see Plummer.

Barlow, Frank. Edward the Confessor. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.

Brunner, H. The Sources of the Law of England: An Historical Introduction to the Study of English Law. Trans. W. Hastie. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clarck, 1888.

Chemiss, Michael D. Ingeld and Christ: Heroic Concepts and Values in Old English Christian Poetry. Hague: Mouton, 1972.

Conner, Patrick W. “Source Studies, the Old English Guthlac A and the English Benedictine Reformation.” Revue BJnJdictine 103 (1993), 380-413.

Felix. Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac. Bertram Colgrave, trans. and ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956.

Garmonsway, G. N., trans. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1972.

Geremek, Bronislaw. "The Marginal Man." In The Medieval World, pp. 347-373. Jacques Le Goff, ed., Lydia G. Cochrane, trans. London: Collins and Brown, 1990.

Goebel, Julius. Felony and Misdemeanor: A Study in the History of English Criminal Procedure. Vol. 1. New York: The Commonwealth Fund, 1937.

Gordon, I. L., ed. The Seafarer. New York: Appleton-Century-Croffs, 1966.

Greenfield, Stanley B. “The Formulaic Expression of the Theme o f ‘Exile’ in Anglo-Saxon Poetry.” Speculum. 30,200-206.

— . Hero and Exile. London: Hambledon Press, 1989.

Hobsbawm, Eric. Bandits. Revised Edition. New York: Pantheon Books, 1981.

Holt, J. C. Robin Hood. London: Thames and Hudson, 1982.

Howe, Nicholas. The Old English Catalogue Poems. Anglistica 23. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1985. 45 Jolliffe, J. E. A. The Constitutional History of Medieval England, fourth edition. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1961.

Jones, Christopher A. “Envisioning the Cenobium in the Old English Guthlac A.” Mediaeval Studies. 57 (1995), 259-291.

Kemble, John M. Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici: Chartae Anelo-Saxonicae. London: Sumptibus Societatis, 1839.

Keynes, Simon, trans. “The Fonthill Letter.” Words. Texts, and Manuscripts: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture Presented to Helmut Gneuss. Woodbridge, 1992, 53-97.

Liebermann, Felix. Die Gesetze Per Aneelsachsen. 1903-1916. Druck: J. Hochstuhl, 1960.

— . “Friedlosigkeit bel den Angelsachsen.” In Festschrift Heinrich Brunner zum Siebzigsten Geburstag dargebracht von Schulem und Verehrem. pp. 17-37. Weimar: H. Bohlaus Nachgfolger, 1910.

Loyn, H. R. Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest. Second Edition. London: Longman, 1991.

Orderic Vitalis. The Ecclesiastical Historv of Orderic Vitalis. Ed. and Trans. Marjorie Chibnall. Vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.

Plummer, Charles, Ed. Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel. Revised edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892-1899.

Ridyard, Susan J. The Roval Saints of Anglo-Saxon England: A Studv of West Saxon and East Anglian Cults. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Roberts, Jane. The Guthlac Poems of the Exeter Book. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.

Robertson, A. J., trans. The Laws of the Kings of England From Edmund to Henrv I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925.

Stanley, E. G. “Wolf, My Wolf!” Old English and New: Studies in Language and Linguistics in Honor of Frederic G. Cassidv. New York: Garland, 1992.

46 Trehame, E. M. “A Unique Old English Formula for Excommunication from Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 303.” Anglo-Saxon England. 24, 185-212.

Wilson, R. M. The Lost Literature of Medieval England. 2nd ed. London: Methuen, 1970.

Wormald, Patrick. “A Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Lawsuits.” Anglo-Saxon England. 17, 247- 281. — . “Charters, Law and the Settlement of Disputes in Anglo-Saxon England.” In The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe, pp. 149-168. Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

47 CHAPTER 2

PLACING THE GESTA HEREWARDI IN CONTEXT

In the history of the outlaw-hero, the eleventh-century figure Hereward is of critical

importance. His significance derives in part from the wealth of information about him that

has been preserved, and in part from the time periods in which his stories were told and

recorded. Several documents contain fairly large collections of Hereward stories, including the Gesta Herewardi. Geoffrey Gaimar’s Lestorie Des Engles, and the Liber Eliensis. In addition to these, there are a variety of briefer notices of the outlaw in several chronicles and the Domesdav Book. This wealth of story and reference makes Hereward the best documented of the medieval outlaws, and judged purely by the amount of surviving legend

Hereward appears to be the most popular English outlaw before Robin Hood. The fact that narratives about him exist, or existed, in Old English, Anglo-Norman, Latin, and Middle

English, and were written down over a period covering the eleventh through the fourteenth centuries, means that they present a unique opportunity to view the development and changing functions of the outlaw-hero. Living, as he did, at the time of the Norman conquest, Hereward additionally provides us with an opportunity to see how Anglo-Saxon outlaw-hero storytelling conventions were recast to fit the new political realities of post conquest England. Spanning the eleventh through the fourteenth centuries, these legends

48 provide a link from the Anglo-Saxon stories of exiles and outlaws to those found in the romances of King Horn, Havelock the Dane, and Gamelyn, as well as the ballads of Robin

Hood.

The longevity of Hereward’s popularity, and the quantity of recorded material about him mark him out as unique among English outlaws of the Middle Ages. The reason for the widespread appeal of Herward stories is an issue that has not been addressed. The single most important version of the Hereward legend is the Gesta Herewardi. a twelfth-century compilation of Hereward stories found in the thirteenth-century Peterborough Cathedral

Manuscript I, currently held at Cambridge University (Martin 7-12). Although there are at least three independent accounts of portions of Hereward’s life, it is the Gesta’s version of

Hereward’s actions that seems to have been the basis for most of the later re-tellings, and therefore serves as the foundation for the outlaw’s popularity. Viewed in this light, the Gesta

Herwardi takes on an importance that has not been so far granted to it by scholars, who too often have dismissed it as a rather haphazard compilation of legend and romance. Instead, I will argue that the work is a carefully, if not expertly, constructed narrative that deliberately developed certain themes out of the outlaw legends that guaranteed its popularity among the monastic abbeys and cathedrals which preserved it. Given its unique status and its relative unfamiliarity to scholars, basic questions about who wrote the Gesta. when and where it was written, and who its intended audience might have been are of immediate interest and will be addressed below.

Despite the importance of the Hereward legends for an understanding of outlaw and exile literature in medieval England, there has been a remarkable dearth of recent scholarship

49 on the subject. A quick survey of the reception history of the Hereward narratives will sufficiently illustrate why a re-assessment of this material is long overdue, and why it has suffered from critical neglect. The Hereward narratives were first edited and brought to critical attention in the nineteenth century during a time of renewed interest in the Norman conquest and its implications for an understanding of the English national character. The

Gesta Herewardi and some of the chronicle accounts of Hereward were first published by

Michel in his Chroniques Anelo Normandes (1836), but both this and another early edition published by Wright were based on a faulty transcript of the original manuscript fGesta xlvii). The standard edition was published in 1888 by Gesta in their edition of Geffrei

Gaimar’s Lestorie Des Engles for the Rolls Series.

Once these narratives were presented in edited versions, they rapidly caught the imaginations of both historians and historical novelists. Nineteenth century historians, even while believing history and fiction to be “diametrically opposed” genres, based their accounts of the Norman conquest on foundations laid down by historical novelists who often emphasized distinctions between Normans and Saxons to reinforce their own political v i e w s . 8 Many Victorian novelists and historians looked back to the events of the eleventh century as points to which crucial elements of the English national character could be traced.

In this intellectual climate, the Hereward stories were first brought to the attention of scholars and the general public through the standard historical works of the period, such as E.

A. Freeman’s massive The Norman Conquest (1871). Freeman’s appendix on Hereward is

8 This is demonstrated by Clare Simmons in Reversing the Conquest: Historv and Mvth in Nineteenth-Centurv British Literature (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990).

50 still the most commonly cited point of reference for what is known about the outlaw. As

Clare Simmons has demonstrated, however, the major Victorian historians advanced and perpetuated an image of the eleventh century, and particularly of Norman and Saxon relations, that had been constructed in the imaginations of novelists. Medieval historical materials were so consistently approached in this manner, that “the Saxon-and-Norman opposition was by the end of Victoria’s reign treated not as a literary opposition but as an actuality” (200). The connections between historical writing on the conquest and novelistic recreation have been observed by Cyril Hart as well, who noted that “but for Kingsley’s story, it is doubtful if Freeman would have devoted quite so much space to Hereward in the fourth volume of his Norman Conquest published just five years later” (28). “History,”

Simmons concludes, “had become a more clearly defined world of heroes and villains than the fictional model it followed” (200). In this Victorian context, the legends about Hereward were read as straightforward stories of nationalistic opposition to an alien invader. Certainly it is appealing to imagine Hereward’s actions as the last stand of the English before their final subjugation by the Normans — a Sir Walter Scott novel come to life. Both Kingsley’s

1866 novel, Hereward the Wake, and Swanton’s inclusion in 1984 of his translation of the

Gesta Herewardi in a volume entitled Three Lives of the Last Englishmen (together with lives of Harold Godwinson and Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester) testify to the ongoing appeal that such a reading of the Hereward narratives continues to have. Even so recent a review of the Hereward material as John Hayward’s in 1988 concludes that the outlaw-hero serves “to keep alive a sense of English identity ” and “establish[es] a Francophobe topos” (302,

51 303). However, the characterization of this material as the product of racial identity politics, as I will demonstrate, fails to recognize the complexities of the Gesta Herewardi.

The accepted interpretation of the Gesta ignores the fact that the text appears to have been written by a Norman monk; it overlooks the complexity of the relationships depicted within the text itself, preferring to see distinctions only on racial lines; it does nothing to illuminate the otherwise puzzling manuscript context of the work; and it assumes a model of

Norman-English conflict in the monasteries after the Conquest that, as we shall see, has recently faced serious challenges. Critical re-assessment of the Hereward materials has not caught up with the awareness that our interpretive models for these texts are based upon a

Victorian worldview. The fact that E. A. Freeman’s treatment of the outlaw is still the most comprehensive and frequently cited work on the subject is made the more remarkable by the fact that as early as 1895 it was noted that Freeman had not made use of all available sources on the outlaw (Round 159-164), and his approach has subsequently been recognized as based on an “uncritical” and mistaken set of assumptions regarding the sources he did use (Hart

29). Historians have not been alone in their neglect of the Hereward documents. Despite the fact that historians such as Hart have occasionally noted the potential usefulness of the Gesta in providing a bridge between the Anglo-Saxon period and later medieval rom ances,^ literary critics and folklorists alike have almost completely ignored this material, and have overlooked any potential it might provide for linking Anglo-Saxon storytelling traditions to those common in the Middle English period.

9 "The Gesta would indeed repay a literary investigation by those interested in the influence of the Anglo-Saxon epic on the development of the Anglo-Norman romance" (Hart 35).

52 Because Victorian concepts of Norman-English racial conflict have driven much of the reception of the early post-conquest monastic chronicles, we need to reconsider the roles and functions of these documents. Recent re-evaluations by Susan Ridyard and others suggest that the generalizations earlier scholars drew from a handful of dramatic examples of

Norman-English conflict in the post-conquest chronicles (and particularly Norman scepticism about English saints) probably exaggerated the levels of conflict between Norman and English elements in the religious foundations. Ridyard calls on us to “divest ourselves of what, on examination, dissolves into a myth of Norman scepticism,” noting that “the most striking attribute of the Norman churchmen is not their scepticism towards, their contempt of or their hostility to the English saints: rather it is their businesslike readiness to make the heroes of the past serve the politics of the present” fRoval Saints 251). We may likewise suspect that Victorian historians were making “heroes of the past serve the politics of the present” when they gave such a unidimensional cast to the whole cycle of Hereward narratives, overlooking elements of Norman/English cooperation and harmony in them.

Even as “there was created in the years following 1066 a powerful coalition of continental churchman and Anglo-Saxon saint in opposition to the threats posed variously by Norman aristocrat, by English layman, by Norman bishop, by rival religious house and on occasion by rebellious monk” CRoval Saints 252), so do the Hereward legends, for the most part the product of this Norman/English ecclesiastical culture, present us with a coalition of the

Anglo-Saxon hero with Norman churchmen (such as the author of the Gesta and Robert of

Swaffham, not to mention Hereward’s chaplain Hugh the Breton, other times called “the

Norman”) against local Norman nobility and churchmen who would despoil the abbeys.

53 There is also evidence suggesting that the level of conflict between the secular Norman landholders and the native monastic foundations has been exaggerated.

In a manuscript from Ely (Brit. Mus. 18. C. I) there is an, admittedly late, Middle

English story based on local Ely tradition that reports an abbreviated version of the story of the seige of 1070 and its aftermath. The story tells how the soldiers had “come with theire retinewe, of whom every one is put to one of the cheifest monkes even as a guest to his host”

(Michel xviii). The suggestion of amicable coexistence raised in the use of “guest” and

“host” is quickly emphasized, “What should I use many words? The hostes made exceeding much of their guestes, and the guestes of their hostes” (Michel xix). After growing accustomed to dining together, side by side, in the monastery’s hall, the soldiers are finally called away by William to fight in Normandy against his son Robert (who, the story says,

“havyng the raynes at libertye made great hurly burly there”): “these souldiours were sorry to depart; but our monkes (marvell it is to tell) did not only with teares bewayle the departure of their deere fellowes the noble soldiours, but also with howling fearfull to be heard, did cry out beating their brestes voyd of all hope” (Michel xix). After setting the soldiers on their way with a solemn procession, we are told that the monks returned to the monastery and

“very curiously caused every mans armes to be painted upon the walls of the hall, where they dined and supped, for a perpetual 1 memory of them” (Michel xix-xx). These arms “from antiquity to this present” have been “diligently kept and polished” (Michel xx). If there is anything to this admittedly late tradition, then the sudden reversals of loyalty demonstrated by these monks (at one moment actively fighting the soldiers — as we shall see — and the next playing host to them) does not bear out the presupposition that they were acting on the

54 basis of racial feeling. There is other evidence that the Norman-English situation was more complex than an explanation based on racial identity politics can support. For instance, while Ivo Taillebois is one of the great villains of the Gesta Herewardi. and is equally badly portrayed in the chronicles from Crowland, he is remembered as a great benefactor of

Spalding (Freeman, iv 470-471). In light of the recent critical re-evaluation of the chronicles from this period, and the growing awareness that previous assumptions about the nature and purposes of much of this material were based on now discarded Victorian views of racial identity, a fresh look at the Hereward materials in their cultural and manuscript contexts is called for.

The extant Hereward narratives were written over a span of about 250 years. We also know, based on their own statements, that they were circulating in both the monastic and secular communities in and around the fenlands, and they have survived in Latin,

English, and Anglo-Norman manuscripts. The diversity of audiences suggested by this chronological, social, and linguistic breadth make it unlikely that a sweeping explanation of their purpose as a celebration of the “self-reliant courage” of the English is adequate to explain their prolonged popularity. 10 To free ourselves from the romantic preconceptions of earlier writers, and to establish what the Gesta Herewardi is, and how it came to be written and preserved, we need to begin with a fresh look at the circumstances of its composition and preservation, and look especially at the social milieu in which the legends were circulated and recorded.

10 This characterization is from Lieutenant-General Harward, Hereward: The Saxon Patriot: A Historv of His Life and Character, with a Record of His Ancestors and Descendants. A.D. 445 to A.D. 1896. (London: Elliot Stock, 1896). vi. This work is a stunning example of the Victorian identity politics to which I have been referring.

55 Nearly all of the serious critical attention paid to the Hereward legends has come as a by-product of historical research into the effects of the Norman Conquest on the powerful fenland monasteries where the legends of Hereward were written and preserved. The most detailed scholarly treatments of the various Hereward materials have been done by Cyril

Hart and E. A. Freeman. Both scholars were interested in clarifying the historical facts surrounding Hereward’s involvement in the rebellion of 1070 and the sacking of

Peterborough Abbey, the actions that brought him general notice in the chronicles. The result, however, is that both treat the additional legendary adventures of the outlaw rebel leader as little more than colorful anecdotes. The largest repository of Hereward legend, the

Gesta Herewardi. contains one of the least reliable accounts of the sack of Peterborough abbey from the standpoint of historical inquiry, and so has been doubly neglected. The

Gesta remains, however, of singular interest to the scholar of late Anglo-Saxon monastic culture, as well as of outlaw legendry, for its unique status as a crafted account of an outlaw’s life, deliberately intended to stand by itself and not just provide “color” to a larger chronicle. As such, it is the first fully developed extant outlaw-hero story in the literature of

England. On these grounds alone it is worthy of more critical attention than it has received to date. But as we shall see, the Gesta also throws valuable light on the late Anglo-Saxon monastic culture of the fenlands, particularly on the important abbeys of Ely and

Peterborough, providing insight into the roles that monastic culture defined for itself in the social upheavals following the Norman conquest.

56 The Gesta begins with a very brief account of Hereward’s wild youth, in which he

makes so much trouble for his neighbors and father that at last his father has King Edward

outlaw him:

Qua de re pater ejus a rege Edwardo impetravit, ut exul a patria fieret, patefactis omnibus quæcunque in patrem et contra parentes vel quæ contra provinciales egerat. Et factum est. Unde statim agnomen Exulis adeptus est.... fGesta 342-3)

[And so his father ensured that he was banished from his homeland by King Edward, disclosing everything that he had perpetrated against his parents and against the inhabitants of the locality. And this being done, he at once acquired the name of “Outlaw”.... (Swanton 47)] ^ I

Hereward then travels to Northumberland, Cornwall, Flanders, Ireland, and elsewhere,

repeatedly demonstrating his courage, his skill in battle, and his ability to lead troops. While abroad, Hereward hears that his father has died, and that Normans are threatening his family.

He returns to England, finds his brother slain and himself the only heir, and proceeds to kill the Normans who have taken over his estate in a scene reminiscent of Ulysses’ homecoming.

With Norman heads prominently displayed at his gates, his presence in England rapidly

becomes common knowledge, and he is invited by the monks and rebels at Ely to join them

in their uprising against William. He travels to Ely with a body of men he has collected, and

is put in charge of the island’s defense. Repeatedly Hereward’s clever uses of the natural advantages of the swamp and the fenland island foil William’s invasion attempts, until the

island’s defenses eventually fall to the treachery of the monks themselves while Hereward is absent. Hereward and a handful of his men escape William’s soldiers and he becomes a woodlands outlaw. His battles with the troops of the king, in which he is uniformly

i I Although I generally rely, as here, on Swanton’s translation of the Gesta Herewardi. it is a fairly free rendering and I have therefore chosen to use my own translations in some places. 57 successful, continue for some time until he is persuaded by a woman who wishes to marry him to settle with William. William, tired of the repeated humiliations his armies have suffered at Hereward’s hands, agrees to a meeting and the two meet amicably. Jealousies among the Norman knights, however, lead to Hereward’s seizure and imprisonment for nearly a year before his men successfully stage an escape for him. Faced with the prospect of fresh hostilities from the newly freed outlaw, William grants Hereward a full pardon and returns all his family’s lands to him. With this Hereward is satisfied and settles down to live out his life quietly. Thus the Gesta. in its presentation of a wide variety of Hereward legends, is nearly unique in its inclusion of stories that extend both well before and after the events of the siege of 1070 which attracted the attention of both medieval chroniclers and modem historians.

The manuscript context in which the Gesta Herewardi appears deserves greater attention than it has received. The most fully developed version of the Gesta was incorporated into one of the most valuable cartularies belonging to Peterborough abbey, assembled around 1256 by Robert of Swaffham, the cellarer of the abbey. In its completed form, the Gesta survives only in this manuscript, although what appears based on its contents to have been an earlier draft of it was likely the basis for chapters 104-107 of Book II of the

Liber Eliensis (Liber Eliensis. xxxv). There is also an unpublished resume of the Gesta

Herewardi written in the margins of Walter of Whittlesey’s extension of Robert of

Swaffham’s continuation of the Chronicle of Hugh Candidus preserved in the British Library

(B.L., Additional MS. 39758). This version has never been edited. Whittlesey’s manuscript was written around 1330 (Hugh xviii-xix). The version that has had the greatest impact, both

58 on later medieval chroniclers and on modem scholars and novelists, is that found in

Swaffliam’s manuscript.

Robert of Swaffham’s cartulary has been described by Janet Martin in her book The

Cartularies and Registers of Peterborough Abbev in which she characterizes Swaffham’s collection and layout of the charters, papal privileges, chronicle, and other documents that make up the manuscript as “ordered and thorough,” with the various types of documents transcribed in separate sections (8). It is the “first true cartulary in the surviving series [from

Peterborough], and it is also the largest and most comprehensive, a source for much later work, and greatly valued by both abbey and cathedral” (8). The manuscript, as assembled by

Swaffham, opened with Hugh Candidus’ Chronicle recounting in Latin the history of

Peterborough abbey, which Swaffham continued up to his own day. The premeditated and ordered nature of Swaffham’s layout can be seen in his treatment of Hugh’s Chronicle.

Whereas the original chronicle had papal bulls and royal charters interwoven into the narrative, Swaffham pulled these out of their narrative context and placed them into separate sections. He then supplied connecting links to cover the gaps this left, added chapter headings, and continued the chronicle down to 1256 (Hugh xviii).

In addition to the relationship it bears to the Gesta in terms of manuscript layout,

Hugh’s Chronicle is relevant to our discussion of Hereward legends, for it has preserved some independent local traditions about Hereward. These I will examine in some detail later. For the present, it is important to note that the chronicle focuses on the establishment, history, and privileges of the abbey at Peterborough. Hugh begins the history of the current abbey of Peterborough by asserting the identity of the seventh-century foundation called

59 Medeshamstede and the twelfth-century abbey of Peterborough: “Est nobile monasterium in regione Gyruiorum quod quondam Medeshamstede nunc autem consuete Burch vocatur”

(Hugh 4; Stenton 313). [There is a famous monastery in the region of the Gyrwas [swamp- dwellers?] once called Medeshamstede, but now generally [called] Borough.] After the roots of the abbey are laid firmly and deeply in early Anglo-Saxon history, there follows a narrative of the abbey’s growth, heavily emphasizing the grants and privileges given to it by ancient kings and popes. This growth came to an abrupt end with the viking invasions of the ninth century, and the monastery was left an abandoned ruin. Hugh’s account of the restoration of the abbey by Bishop Æthelwold is based upon the Peterborough insertion in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle account o f963.

I have shown in Chapter One how Æthelwold’s land dealings in assembling the estates for the reconstructed abbeys were sometimes highly suspect. But for Hugh there is no question about Æthelwold’s sanctity of purpose. Æthelwold is lead by a vision to the ruined monastery, now a residence only for cattle and sheep, and begins to set the place in order. During the rebuilding, ancient documents detailing the lands and privileges of the monastery are discovered, and King Edgar ratifies them (Hugh 24-38). In this vein, detailing the grants and privileges of the monastery and the terrible things that happen to those who work against the monastery’s interests, the chronicle continues until 1175, and then is continued by Swaffham himself up until 1256. The Chronicle is followed by a collection of charters, papal privileges, royal grants, and the like showing the growth and development of abbey estates. The manuscript, as originally designed, then ends with the Gesta Herewardi.

In a record from 1460 of the valuables kept by the monastery in its treasury, this manuscript

60 is listed and referred to as “le Swaffam” (Martin 8). That the Gesta was not just impulsively added to the end of Swaffham’s manuscript is evidenced by the care taken in the writing of the work. Its most recent editors. Hardy and Martin, describe it as having been “written in a beautiful large hand” with rubricated chapter titles fGesta lii). In contrast to the care lavished on the physical presentation of the work, the writing itself is not ornamental or even skillful; Hardy and Martin remark that “the scribe was comparatively ignorant of Latin, and the author was probably not much his superior in that respect” (Gesta lii). Despite its stylistic shortcomings, though, care was nevertheless taken to correct the MS.

The value placed upon this manuscript by the Peterborough community extended well beyond the dissolution of the monastery in 1539, as is demonstrated by an adventure it underwent at the hands of Cromwell’s soldiers in 1643. According to an account of the event written on the fly-leaf of the manuscript, it had been hidden from the soldiers in the ceiling of the church above the choir, and was found by one of Cromwell’s soldiers “when thay paid downe all the seats in the quire” (Hardy & Martin xlviii, and Martin xvi). The

“chaunter” who had hidden it there, one Humfrey Austin, then sought among the soldiers for it, asking for “an old Latin Bible which were lost.” Eventually discovering who had it, he paid the soldier ten shillings and had him sign his name and a statement on the flyleaf that the book should henceforth be let alone (Hardy & Martin xlviii, and Martin xvi): “T pray let this Scripture booke alone for he hath paid me for it; therefore I would desire you to let it alone; By me Henry Topclyffe, Souldier under Capt. Cromwell, Coll: Crome[well’s] sonn; theirfore I pray let it alone; By me Henry Topclyffe’” (Martin xvi). That such care and expense should be taken to preserve this manuscript is evidence of the value it still possessed

61 for the cathedral even in the seventeenth century. Considering its content and structure, the cartulary must have been a foundational document in the monastery’s demonstrations of its property claims. As Martin has noted, its heavy annotations indicate that it was used a great deal, and it formed the basis for many later chronicles and cartularies (Martin 8).

We are left with the question of why an account of a local outlaw should have been placed at the end of such a carefully planned and important manuscript as this one. In a manuscript that is so singlemindedly devoted to the history and rights of Peterborough abbey the Gesta Herewardi seems out of place. Hereward was not an important figure in the history of Peterborough. Some accounts, probably incorrectly, make him a nephew of Abbot Brand, but there is no relationship claimed in the Gesta itself. When Hugh Candidus refers to him in his Chronicle as “a man of the monks” [homo monachorum], this could be taken to mean no more than that he held lands from Peterborough abbey, as the Domesdav records indicate that he did from Crowland abbey:

Terram Sancti Guthlaci quam tenet Ogerus in Repinghale, dicunt fuisse dominicam firmam monachorum. et Ulchel abbatem commendasse eam ad firmam Hereuuardo. sicut inter eos conueniret uno quoque anno, sed abbas resaisiuit eam antequam Hereuuardus de patria fugeret. eo quod conuentionem non tenuisset.

[They say that Saint Guthlac’s land, which Oger holds in Rippingale, was the monks’ demesne farm, and that Abbot Ulchel let it to Hereward at rent, as might be agreed between them each year; but the abbot took possession of it again before Hereward fled the country, because he had not kept the agreement.] (Lincolnshire Domesdav 72.48)

It should also be noted that Crowland Abbey, at this time, was operating under the administration of Peterborough (Knowles 72). And Hart has pointed to other Domesday evidence probably linking Hereward with Peterborough lands (Hart 29-30). But again, if he did hold land from Peterborough, this is not mentioned in the Gesta. Scholars have pointed

62 out that the Gesta Herewardi touches upon the sack of Peterborough abbey by Hereward and

his men in 1070, but no other explanation for the presence of this work in Swaffham’s

Peterborough manuscript has been offered (Martin 8). In fact, the Chronicle of Hugh

Candidus, with which the manuscript opens, already contains a much more detailed and

historically accurate account of the sack of the abbey by the outlaws. Hugh’s account

carefully sets the attack on the abbey amid the confusion and uprisings in the early years of

William’s reign, and even details the treasures stolen from the abbey and their disposition

afterwards. With such a careful and attentive account of the event already present in the

manuscript, it seems unlikely that the fairly lengthy Gesta would be included just for the sake of the very abbreviated and wildly inaccurate account of the sack of Peterborough that it contains.

Although preserved in a Peterborough manuscript, the Gesta was most probably not written there. The author of the Gesta itself is, unfortunately, never directly identified in the manuscript, but some clues can be drawn from the preface to the Gesta and a likely reference to it in the Liber Eliensis. The Gesta opens with a brief preface recounting the anonymous author’s struggles to assemble a written account of Hereward from the oral and written sources he was able to find. Among the sources he cites is one written in English that he admits to having difficulty in translating. His reference to not being sufficiently expert

“exarare deleta incognitarum literarum” (Gesta 339-40) [to decipher what is obliterated in the unfamiliar writing (Swanton 45)] has led to the supposition that he was a Norman monk, or at least not English. The research that underlay the creation of the Gesta. as described in

its preface, is not unlike that in Bede’s Ecclesiastical Historv. to give Just one famous

63 example, in the mobilization of a number of clerics to seek information, in the widespread search for documents, and in the willingness to rely upon circulating oral histories when written documents were not forthcoming. The author of the Gesta makes clear that a number of monks, and probably more than one monastic house, were involved in the search for sources. If we are to take him at his word, then at least one, and possibly two or more, written Old English accounts of Hereward were located and translated with some difficulty.

To these written accounts, he added information “de hiis quae a nostris et a quibusdam suorum audivimus, cum quo a principiis illius conversati sunt, et in multis consortes fuerunt" fGesta 340) [I heard from our own people and from some of those who were familiar with him from the beginning and who were associated with him in many exploits (Swanton 46)].

From such statements as this it is clear that the writer was a member of one of the monastic houses in the fenlands area.

E. O. Blake, in his edition of the Liber Eliensis. suggests that the author of the Gesta

Herewardi was one Richard, a monk of Ely mentioned in Book II of the Liber Eliensis as having been the author of much of the source material for the Liber Eliensis’s discussion of

Hereward: “In libro autem de ipsius gestis Herewardi, dudum a venerabili viro ac doctissimo fratre nostro beate memorie Ricardo edito, plenius descripta inveniuntur” (Liber Eliensis

188, and xxxvi). [However, in a book about the deeds of Hereward himself, being long ago produced by the late Richard, a venerable man and most learned brother of ours, these things are found more fully described.] That the Richard spoken of here was the author of the

Gesta would fit the known facts, and would mean that he was deceased by 1174, since this is the latest possible date for the completion of the Liber Eliensis. It is an intriguing thought

64 that what is now commonly read as a celebration of English nationalistic spirit in opposition to the new Norman king may well have been written by a Norman monk. This clearly complicates the usual reading of the Gesta as a document about national conflict and a celebration of the English spirit.

Determining the audience of the Gesta is as difficult as determining its author. From the very beginning, the author of the Gesta addresses his audience directly, as “you” (vestra dilectid), and Blake has suggested that the intended addressee might be a bishop of Ely

(xxxvi). Such an identification is plausible. The preface to the Gesta indicates that a large amount of time and effort, as well as a number of monks, were put to use in composing the work. The authority of a bishop’s request could justify this expenditure of time, effort, and materials on a life of a secular outlaw. The author implies that the work was undertaken at the request of the addressee, “quibus quidem vestris desideriis satisfacere cupientes, multis in locis perquirendo manus convertimus” (Gesta 339). [So, wanting to satisfy your wishes, I took care to enquire in many places (Swanton 45).] There is also an assumed familiarity with fenland lifestyle and history in the work, apparent at such times as when he refers to Ely

“in temporibus abbatum” [in the time of the abbots] (Tiber Eliensis xxxvi), without any further explanation; or to singing “tripliciter cum suis sociis more Girviorumin” (Gesta 352)

[in a trio with his friends in the manner of the Fenland people (Swanton 53)], both suggesting a fenland audience. Ely, then, being the place where Hereward initially led his resistance to

William, was a natural place to maintain interest in Hereward. Clearly interest in the outlaw continued for some time at Peterborough as well, for accounts of him appear in Hugh’s

Chronicle (twelfth-century), the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at Peterborough (eleventh-century).

65 and the Chronicon Aneliae Petriburgense (fourteenth-century?), as well as in the Gesta

Herewardi preserved there. There is no indication of how the Gesta came to be copied at

Peterborough, although it is likely that Peterborough was one of the houses that would have been asked to contribute material toward its creation, and may have thus been interested in obtaining a copy of the completed document.

If the instigator of the Gesta Herewardi was a bishop, it is likely that he would have been the first bishop of Ely, Hervey (1109-1131). The addressee is said to have seen two of

Hereward’s knights himself, and that they had been maimed by the Normans. As Blake points out, it seems unlikely that the maimed knights would have survived to meet Bishop

Nigel after 1131 (xxxvi n.8). Another factor that makes the identification with Bishop

Hervey likely is the explosion of hagiographical writing at Ely from the 1 lOO’s through the

1130’s. Susan Ridyard has illustrated how the tone of Hervey's episcopate (1109-1131) differed markely from that of his successor, Nigel (1131-69). Hervey's episcopate was a time of “regeneration and growth,” in which Hervey himself played an important role in the writing of several new hagiographies. Since several prose and poetic hagiographies of the female saints of Ely were written or rewritten following the translations of the saints in 1106

(Ridyard, “Condigna,” 180 n.9), Ridyard plausibly argues that Hervey was likely “the instigator of a large-scale programme of hagiographical work... perhaps intended to establish as clearly as possible the continuity between the old abbey and the new bishopric” (185). In contrast, the episcopate of Bishop Nigel was characterized by conflict between the monastery and the bishopric. The monks lost little time in writing about St. Etheldreda’s miraculous interventions on their behalf, as is recorded in the third book of the Liber Eliensis

66 (Ridyard, “Condigna” 185; Liber Eliensis Appendix E). There is no evidence that the

Hereward legends were recast similarly to support either the monks or the bishop, but instead the Gesta Herwardi gives the impression that the community at Ely is united. Thus it seems most likely that it was written before the end of Hervey's episcopate in 1131. What is peculiar is that if it was written amid a rapid production of material emphasizing the holiness of the patron saints of the abbey, and of the abbey’s ancient and honorable tradition of venerating those saints and protecting their property, that the bishop should have wanted the life of a secular outlaw to be produced.

The answer to this puzzle may not lie in the subject of the Gesta. but in its purpose.

As we shall see, the Gesta concerns itself largely with questions of rightful ownership. As such, it reinforces one of the main points that the charters which precede it in its manuscript context strive to make, namely, that the traditional claims of the fenland abbeys to the lands about them are sacred and not to be lightly transgressed. In a manuscript that opens with

Hugh’s account of the sacred history of Peterborough and the divine protection that has preserved it and its rights, the Gesta makes a closing statement about the heroic firmness of the fenland people, lay and clerical, in upholding those rights and in the inevitability of their eventual success despite facing overwhelming odds.

But in order to understand why this flurry of documentation for the abbey’s spiritual and temporal claims was produced during this period we need to consider the difficulties that the fenland monasteries faced after the Norman conquest. The fenland monasteries were a particularly rich and powerful group at the time of the conquest (Knowles 100-102). Those with which we will be most concerned are Ely, Peterborough, Crowland, and Bury St.

67 Edmunds. Of these. Bury was remarkable in already having a Norman abbot from the time of Edward the Confessor, so that Baldwin of Bury is one of the few fenland abbots not replaced or threatened with replacement by William, and he remained in William’s favor throughout his reign. Nevertheless, members of the abbey community were involved in the fenland uprising at Ely in 1070, as is indicated by the presence of a Brother Si ward of St.

Edmunds appearing prominently among Hereward’s men in the Gesta H e r w a r d i.12 Antonia

Gransden has observed that “the fact that William dispossessed all the Anglo-Saxon tenants of St. Edmunds who had fought against him in 1066, suggests that he had reason to be uneasy even about that neighbourhood” (67). Of the other major fenland houses, Ely and

Peterborough were both powerful abbeys which laid claims to rights and privileges dating back before the viking invasions of the ninth-century. Both had been destroyed by the vikings and were later refounded through the vigorous efforts of Bishop Æthelwold during the reign of King Edgar (959-975). Both abbeys had long histories in the area, dating back into legend, reinforced by forged charters and other documents, and were major landholders in East Anglia (on their originary claims, see Miller Chs. 2 and 3, Hugh Candidus 1-44).

Both had much to lose when property in the area began changing hands, and both were involved in resisting the Normans. Ely and Peterborough were to play critical roles in the preservation of the legends about the outlaw Hereward. Crowland abbey, founded upon the site of the seventh-century monk Guthlac’s hermitage, becomes important to the Hereward legends as the place where Hereward’s first wife retired to the life of a nun, and where he himself was buried. It is one of the three abbeys (together with Thomey and Burton) held at

The Saiswold who appears in a list of Hereward's men in Gaimar's history (1. 5575) may be the same person.

68 the time of the Norman conquest by the abbot of Peterborough (Knowles 609). It is also the

abbey that promoted the cult of Waltheof, the rebel English earl who was beheaded in 1076

by William for treason. As rich and powerful landholders, this collection of influential

fenland abbeys was hit hard by the unrest that followed the Norman conquest, and were often themselves at the center of conflict.

Following the conquest wealthy Englishmen often deposited their treasures at

monasteries in an attempt to escape the exactions of the Normans. Knowles notes that in

1070 there was “fairly widespread harrying of the monasteries” that was “intended to deprive possible rebels of the sinews of war” (117). Along with the valuables the abbeys were protecting for secular owners, they lost many of their own possessions at this time to a

Norman government not very concerned with the niceties of ownership of the plundered valuables. Such a situation seems to be what the chronicler John of Peterborough is describing when he says, “Multa monasteria, tam de propriis pecuniis quam de aliorum apud

ipsos depositis, ad quadrantem ultimum spoliata” fChronicon 57). [Many monasteries were robbed to the last penny, both of their own possessions and of those of others deposited into their hands.] Likewise the Liber Eliensis seems to suggest that something similar was happening at Ely during the revolt led by Hereward. Once Hereward had demonstrated his ability to hold off William’s attacks on the island, “nonnulli confidenter sub ipsorum se patrocinio cum substantiis contulerunt” (Liber Eliensis 11.102) [several people confidently brought themselves and their property under their protection]. While Knowles disputes the

impression given by the “ex parte statements of chronicles and cartularies” that the plundering of the monasteries following the conquest was widespread, he makes repeated

69 exceptions for Peterborough, which, while it did remain a wealthy abbey, suffered great

losses, he admits, through mismanagement and theft (111-II8). And as for Ely, after

reviewing the Domesday book and other records from the period, J. H. Round observed that

Ely seems to have been the “special prey of the Norman spoiler” (Round, Victoria 1,340-1).

Lands that had been held as thegn lands, that is, property that could not be alienated from the abbey, were often lost by Ely when they were transferred from English possession to

Norman (Miller 66).

One important Norman lord, Frederick, the brother-in-law of William de Warenne, received lands that had belonged to a king’s thegn named Toki, land that was held from Ely and so could not be alienated from it (Miller 50-1). It has been suggested that Toki may have been slain in one of the battles of 1066 (Fleming 172 & n. 148), but whatever the case,

Frederick is found to hold the lands at an early date. Frederick was himself killed by

Hereward and the lands passed into the hands of William de Warenne, one of King

William’s most powerful lords. Ely seems never to have been able to regain them. The battles Ely fought for such lands were still being waged in the time of Henry I, and quite possibly as late as Henry II (Miller 66). Both Peterborough and Ely were repeatedly involved in controversy, disruption, and rebellion throughout the reigns of Henry I, Stephen, and beyond (Knowles 172, 269-72). In his book The Medieval Fenland. H. C. Darby notes that Ely was the center of major rebellions four more times after Hereward:

in 1139 and 1142, during the turmoil of Stephen’s reign; when the barons held out against King John in 1216; and, in 1265, during the reign of Henry II. After these occasions, the tradition of Ely as a camp of refuge continued for a long time. (146)

70 A more detailed account of recurring rebellions at Ely throughout much of the Middle Ages

is given by Darby and Miller in the Victoria History of Cambridge and Ely (381-402). It is, then, in this context of continuing battles over property and rights lost in 1066 and afterward that many of the fenland abbeys’ cartularies and saint’s lives were written, and that the Gesta

Herewardi was written and produced; thus it is in this context that the account of the outlaw

Hereward’s deeds should be read.

The conflicts over land rights also enter into our discussion of the audience for the

Gesta. If the audience seemed very specific at the beginning of the preface, it appears to broaden significantly by the end:

Propterea namque, ut estimamus, ad magnanimorum operum exempla et ad liberalitatem exercendam profectum erit Herewardum scire, quis fuerit, et magnanimitates illius audire et opera, maxime autem militiam exercere volentibus. Unde monemus, aures advertite, et qui diligentius gesta virorum fortium audire contenditis mentem apponite, ut diligenter tanti viri relatio audiatur -----

[For truly to know who Hereward was and to hear about his magnanimity and his exploits, is conducive to magnanimous acts and generosity, especially in those wishing to undertake the warrior’s life. So 1 urge you to pay attention, especially you who are concerned to hear of the exploits of brave men; listen carefully to this account of so great a man... (Swanton 46).]

Although the broadening in address here may just be a literary commonplace clumsily handled, it does seem odd that in a preface apparently directed to a bishop Richard should suddenly assume his audience is “wishing to undertake the warrior’s life.” Certainly Richard knew that interest in his material extended beyond the bishop to the other members of the monastic houses in the area, so he must have felt that his stories about Hereward would reach beyond this one man. Indeed, his intentions here sound very much like those he ascribes to one Leofric the Deacon, said to be Hereward’s priest at Bourne, who purportedly wrote one

71 of the English accounts upon which the Gesta is based. Our author says, “huius enim memorati presbyteri erat studium, omnes actus gigantum et bellatorum ex fabulis antiquorum, aut ex fideli relatione, ad edificationem audientium congregate, et ob memoriam

Angliae literis commendare” (Gesta 339). [It was the endeavor of this afore-mentioned priest to collect together all the deeds of giants and warriors out of the tales of antiquity, or from reliable histories, for the edification of his audience, and for their remembrance to commit them to writing in English.] This description sounds very much like Richard’s own efforts as he describes them in his preface (which we will examine in the following chapter), and he may have had a purpose very similar to Leofric’s in mind in presenting a local hero from the previous generation who did not hesitate to take up arms and defend his claims to his family’s inheritance. James Clifford has pointed out that setting one’s story “a generation back” from the time of writing “is approximately the temporal distance that many conventional ethnographies assume when they describe a passing reality, ‘traditional’ life, in the present tense” (114). In many ways the Gesta Herewardi fits Clifford’s description of an

“ethnographic allegory.”

If Richard recounted these stories for the “edification” of his audience, what was supposed to be learned from this narrative? He has already told us that reading such stories should incite us to great deeds and generosity, 13 especially if we are aspiring to a soldier’s life, and the emphasis on martial prowess and fair play in the Gesta supports his contention.

But the Gesta was written in Latin, at a monastery, likely at the request of a bishop, and with

13 These are aspects of the medieval virtue of fortitudo. See, for instance, Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale where fortitude is the remedy for sloth {accidie), and is presented in terms very similar to this.

72 the efforts and resources of more than one monastic house mobilized to produce it. Why would monastic communities take so much care over a work whose educational value was admittedly mainly applicable to soldiers? And if it was indeed intended for soldiers, then why not in a vernacular — either in English, which was still being written at Peterborough, or in the increasingly popular French, which a contemporary, Geoffrey Gaimar was using to write about Hereward for a secular audience? Latin, however, suggests that the audience was monastic, or at least clerical.

We have already seen, in the case of Guthlac, the language of soldiering applied to monastic pursuits. But here the language does not seem to be serving a primarily metaphorical purpose. Is it possible that the monks themselves were, in some sense other than as milites Christi, being considered as warriors? There is evidence that, at least in the fenlands, this may well have been the case in the eleventh century. If this is so, and monks were engaging in both physical and legal combat in defense of their abbeys’ property, then the “warrior” audience may have been the monks themselves, and our questions about the intended audience for this Latin work may be answered. That there was an increasing militancy at Ely after the conquest can be seen in the changing depiction of St. Æthelthryth.

In an addition (from the late eleventh or early twelfth century) to the miracles already recorded for her she appears to a certain Gervase who was “a mighty enemy of St Etheldreda

[Æthelthryth], and, as if he waged a special war against her, attacked and oppressed her possessions whenever and wherever he could” (Ridyard, “Condigna” 184). When he brought yet another lawsuit against the abbey, the saint and her sisters Sexburga and

Withburga appeared to him and each stabbed him through the heart with her staff. Gervase,

73 of course, died, and the story of his death spread so that “fear of the saint spread through all her neighbors, and for many years no noble, judge, thegn or man of any note dared seize any possessions of the church of Ely — so manfully did the holy virgin everywhere protect her properties” (Ridyard “Condigna’^ 185). Such an uncharacteristically warrior-like action on the part of this saint is perhaps evidence of the spirit of the times at the abbey.

But a look at the fenland tradition of monastic militancy must begin with Guthlac, the eighth-century hermit monk of the fens who became a local hero and saint. We have already seen how both Felix’s eighth-century life of Guthlac and the Old English Guthlac A celebrate how the young Guthlac, renowned for his abilities as a warrior, turned from a life of military ambition, and “inter nubilosos remotioris heremi lucos cum caelesti adiutorio veri

Dei militem esse proposuit” [determined with heavenly aid to be a soldier of the true God amid the gloomy thickets of that remote desert] (Felix 90-1). Then follows a description of the monk arming himself with the spiritual armor “sese in aciem firmans,... Tantae enim fiduciae erat, ut inter torridas tartari turmas sese contemto hoste iniecerit” [making himself strong for the fight. So great in fact was his confidence that, despising the foe, he hurled himself against the torrid troops of Tartarus] (Felix 90-1). In fact, both the Latin and Old

English versions of Guthlac’s life are filled with military language and analogies. As I noted in the first chapter, Guthlac, as his name suggests, is a saint with an uncommonly martial life. The continued interest in him in the twelfth century, demonstrated by Orderic Vitalis’s reworking of Felix’s life of Guthlac, is evidence that perhaps that also was a time when monks could appreciate a physically vigorous exemplar. The involvement of the fenland

74 monks in military life was not limited, though, to the figurative uses of military language we see exemplified in the Guthlac stories. David Knowles notes,

a number of houses [took] an active part in the national resistance to the Duke of Normandy. Especially was this the case, it would seem, at St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, at the New Minster in Winchester, and in the powerful group of fenland houses. (103)

Indeed, Leofric, abbot of Peterborough, contracted his fatal illness while with Harold’s armies in 1066 CASC 1066 E). There was a tradition in the fenlands, then, of monks’ involvement in civil uprisings.

The Gesta depicts the fenland monks in an even more active role than these, though, for monks and other clerics appear throughout the Gesta as actual combatants in Hereward’s battles. As Freeman noted, “if legend is allowed to count for anything, none of the warlike guests of Saint Æthelthryth showed greater zeal in the common cause than the monastic indwellers of her island” (Freeman, iv. 468). Counted among the leaders of Hereward’s band in the Gesta are “Lefricus diaconus” (Leofric the Deacon), and “Rapenaldus dapifer de

Ramesia” (Rapenwald steward of Ramsey). Also given in the list of his troops are “Hugo

Normannus et Presbyter, et Yiardus frater ejus” (the Norman priest Hugo and his brother

Yiardus) who were not only clerics, but Norman fGesta 373; Swanton 67). These two, as we shall see, were not the only Normans who fought with Hereward. Not only does the Gesta show monks serving as military leaders, but it also presents them as active combatants. A

Norman knight captured during the siege of Ely by Hereward and then freed so that he could report back to William on the readiness of the Isle’s defenders tells him:

“Desuper autem unumquemque equitem et monachum clipei, lanceæ parieti adhærentes pendebant, et in medio domus a capite usque deorsum super scamnum loricæ, galeae cum ceteris armis erant appositae, ut semper monachi sicut milites spreto [sic, parati?] vices suas peragere essent, et in expeditione belli ire. Hoc nempe 75 mihi præ cunctis unum et valde mirificum est de illis omnibus quae illuc percepi, monachos loci illius pene omnes tam præclaros in militia esse, quod necdum penitus ante audivi, nec ipse in aliquo alio loco numquam expertus sum.” (Gesta 381)

[“Above each and every knight and monk shields and lances were hanging down, attached to the wall; and down the middle of the hall, above the bench, from the top all the way down, breastplates, helmets and other arms were placed nearby, so that the monks always were prepared to stand guard, and sally forth as soldiers. Indeed, out of everything 1 perceived there, this one thing above everything else was a source of great wonder to me, that almost all the monks of that place are distinguished to such an extent in warfare, a thing which I’ve certainly not heard of before, nor have ever experienced anywhere else.”]

Immediately after this warning about the bellicose spirit of these fenland monks, another

Norman knight, fresh from the blockade of the island, speaks up and reports that

“hestema die quippe et nonnullos ex insula egressos vidi, et tamen non multos, nisi septem militari habitu et procinctu belli insigne armati, quos omnes monachos esse praeter duos, qui emilitiam sibi sicut ceteri milites eos bene noverant, asserebant, vindicantes, et militis jura exercentes . . . ” (Gesta 382)

[“Only yesterday I saw several men coming out of the island, yet not many, only seven distinguished knights in military outfits and ready for combat - all of whom were monks except two, and they knew warfare well, just as if they were soldiers themselves, appropriating, claiming, and exercising the prerogative of soldiers . . . “]

This troop of monks then set fire to a village and harried the Normans troops that confronted them. One of the boatmen of the outlaws was captured and provided the Normans with the names of these outlaws, among whom were

“Turstanus juvenis, qui post Præpositus cognominatus est, B[r]oter de Sancto Edmundo, Siwardus,l4 Leuricus, et Acer Durus.... Hii vero licet monachi, præclarissimi in omni militia fuerunt, et cum Herewardo sæpe in virtute laudis experti et in tirocinio valde probati.” (Gesta 383)

[“young Thurstan who was afterwards named prior. Brother Si ward of St. Edmunds, Leofric, and Acca Hardy.... Although monks, these were certainly most highly

14 Who was one of the two maimed knights of Hereward mentioned in the preface as having met the bishop.

76 distinguished in all military matters and had frequently undertaken deeds of valor with Hereward and were well-tried in their experience of battle.” (Swanton 74)]

Such instances of monks “exercising the prerogative of soldiers” are not exclusive to the period of the Ely siege either. Even after Hereward leaves Ely and takes to the forests as a woodlands outlaw, the Gesta reports that he was accompanied by monks from the fenland monasteries. The Gesta clearly emphasizes the active role in the rebellion taken by the monks, including actual fighting; and it is noteworthy that these militant monks are never criticized for having forsaken their clerical roles, but rather are praised for their militant demeanor and skill in battle. It is possible, then, that the “warrriors” who are to be inspired by the Gesta are the monks of the fenland abbeys themselves, who will be fired by the examples of Hereward and his companions to a stout defense of the lands that they have inherited as members of a monastic community, a defense extending even to physical combat if necessary.

That the twelfth century monks of Ely saw themselves as guardians and defenders of the relics and lands of their patroness, St. Æthelthryth, is certain. Susan Ridyard, in The

Roval Saints of Anglo-Saxon England, has provided us with an excellent description of the ideology that motivated the monks to a militant defense of the abbey’s lands and property in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. She points out that the descriptions of the refoundation by Bishop Æthelwold under King Edgar provide that the monastery’s

principal raison d ’être... was to guard the relics of St. Æthelthryth. In so doing, they establish a single and vital thread of continuity between the community of the seventh century and that of the tenth: they provide for the successor foundation a respectability bom of antiquity. (191)

77 According to the Liber Eliensis. the original abbey of Æthelthryth flourished until it was destroyed during a series of Danish invasions in the ninth century fLiber Eliensis 52-57).

Afterwards, a small group of priests is said to have returned to guard the relics of St.

Æthelthryth until Bishop Æthelwold expelled them in the tenth century to found the new abbey. There has been debate about the historical reality of these claims (see Ridyard Roval

181-183), but “to later generations of Ely monks the assertion of continuity between the two foundations on St. Æthelthryth’s isle was a central point both of faith and of propaganda”

(Ridyard Roval 182). It is more important that the monks believed that they were part of a traditional line of guardians of the saint’s relics and possessions than that such a tradition could be demonstrated to actually exist.

True or not, this ideology was worked into their writings in fundamental ways.

Æthelthryth was unusual among the Anglo-Saxon saints in that upon founding her monastic house at Ely, she personally retained the rights to the property. The position of abbess of the house, upon her death, proceeded through her family line: “Along with the role of abbess was bequeathed that of proprietor, patron and protector” (Ridyard Roval 179). The property of the abbey was very much the property of the saint, in legal as well as the usual theological terms:

The tenth-century monks, in publicising their veneration for St. Æthelthryth’s relics, publicised also their right and intention to inherit the proprietorship vested in those relics. Possession of the church and lands of Ely was vested in St. Æthelthryth: ‘guardianship’ of her relics conferred ‘guardianship’ of the same church and lands. (Ridyard Roval 191)

Thus the monks of Ely saw themselves in the light of guardians not only of the church and relics of the saint, but also of the lands that belonged to her. Although this kind of vocation

78 was not unknown to other foundations, at Ely it seems to have inspired the monks to a highly militant defense of their property, culminating in their defiance of William in 1069-70.

Claims to property based on tradition and sanctioned by miracles are the point of many of the saint’s lives and miracula produced at Ely along with the Gesta during this period. What distinguishes the Gesta from the accounts of the saint’s miracles that were being produced at about the same time is its secular nature. It does contain some elements in common with saints’ v/7æand miracula, which we will examine shortly, but in its presentation of a secular hero, and its emphasis on his military adventures, it is obviously different from them in fundamental ways.

As I have noted, the Gesta is unique in being the first work devoted to an outlaw written in England. The closest English literary parallels to the Gesta are the thirteenth- century Anglo-Norman romances of English heroes which, as Susan Crane has pointed out,

express an interest in legality and landed security not only in their typical translation of an underlying departure-and-retum pattern into terms of dispossession and reinstatement, but also in the legal force which directs the plots’ critical turning points, and in the feudal principles which often inform even minor adventures in the heroes’ exile. (604)

This is equally true of the Latin Gesta Herewardi which, although it precedes many of the

Anglo-Norman outlaw romances Crane talks about, is clearly operating in a similar conceptual world. This is manifest in the basic structure of the Gesta. which moves from dispossession to repossession, and in the many subplots that revolve around kingdoms recaptured, rights regained, and insistence upon chivalrous conduct toward courageous opponents. These aspects of the Gesta will be explored more fully in a following chapter.

79 Contemporaneously with the Gesta Herewardi. what William C. Calin calls “epics of revolt” were being written in France. These epics were unlike their predecessor, the

Chanson de Roland, for

Instead of a crusade against foreign unbelievers, the French barons are seen fighting each other or the king; instead of one decisive battle, a series of wars, a long period of strife and tension; instead of harmony between members of the body politic, seeds of revolt and bitter feuds among the nobles. There is no high moral purpose, no feeling of Crusade or devotion to the Fatherland, no consolation for the dying from God’s Archbishop — instead a markedly egotistical squabbling over fiefs, gruelling wars arising out of personal insult, and the end of any reverence for authority, for God or man. (114-5)

While the first half of this description could equally well be about the Gesta Herewardi. the second half deviates significantly from that work. The Gesta does lay claim to a “high moral purpose” beyond teaching “magnanimity.” The supernatural takes a direct role in the affairs of the hero. In a scene reminiscent of many of the miracle stories in the saints’ vitas of the period, St. Peter appears to Hereward in a vision in order to rebuke him after he robs

Peterborough. Then, when the outlaws become lost in a storm at night in the woods on their way back from returning Peterborough’s looted treasures as St. Peter had demanded,

Hereward and his troop are miraculously led to safety by a white wolf and mysterious lights.

Unlike so much else of the Gesta. these events sound as if they drawn from the miraculous accounts of the saints’ actions in protecting their property by punishing offenders and aiding defenders that appear in the miracula and vitas of this period, and so participate in the same ideological framework. And yet throughout the Gesta the outlaw’s loyalty and reverence are explicitly directed to God and local traditions respecting the rights of the abbeys. For instance, we shall examine in the next chapter the knighting of Hereward, where he is depicted as deliberately holding to a local English tradition of knighting by an abbot or

80 monk, despite Norman challenges to the validity of such a knighting. So although the Gesta

remains focused on the secular activities of its hero, its tone is often consistent with that

found in works about more religious figures.

The Gesta differs from the French epics of revolt when Calin describes their “[lack]

of any reverence for authority, for God or man” (115), and yet is similar to them in the

concern over property and rights, what he calls their “markedly egotistical squabbling over

fiefs, [and] gruelling wars arising out of personal insult” (115). The issues of the Gesta are

in fact not national or racial, but local. The actions of Hereward in the Gesta are all aimed at

regaining his own property, although what seems to have endeared him most to the monastic

chroniclers was his working in conjunction with the local monks to help them retain their

property too. This helps account for the preponderance of attention given to Hereward’s role

in the siege of Ely and in his sacking of Peterborough in the monastic chronicles. In both cases, as we shall see, he is portrayed as working for the interests of the abbeys involved. To

our eyes it might seem that Hereward did more real physical damage to the churches of the

fenlands than he ever did good. His attack on Peterborough resulted in the loss of much of their treasure and thereby incited William to settle a large contingent of Norman knights

there, and his presence at Ely and largely successful defense of it helped to bring down

William’s wrath on it following the end of the revolt of 1070. Yet the monastic chroniclers

of the fenlands refused to see him in this light. Earlier critics have asserted that it was the

anti-Norman political values of his story that made him so appealing to monastic chroniclers.

However, an examination of the work’s social and manuscript contexts reveal that it was not

an anti-Norman bias that ensured the popularity of the outlaw for the almost two centuries

81 that it took for his deeds to be recorded in the version we have, but rather the deeper cultural

traits of independence and defence of local rights that they celebrate. Although these traits

fueled the local resistance to the Normans in the eleventh century, it was their resonance, and

not anti-Norman bias in the accounts of the outlaw, that appealed to local audiences for

generations to come.

The Gesta Herewardi then, is not about a secular hero turned saint, as happened in the case of Hereward’s contemporary Earl Waltheof. Nor is it the last gasp of English

nationalistic fervor that nineteenth and twentieth century readers too often supposed it to be.

In fact the story the Gesta tells begins with Hereward’s dispossession, and concludes with his successful bid to regain his lands, clearly building on the same framework of dispossession and reinstatement that underlies the Anglo-Norman romances. The action of the story is driven throughout by the issue of land ownership. The monks of Ely, we are told in the

Gesta. rebel against William, “quia ipse rex quemdam externum monachum super eos constituere voluerat, ex eis pro quibus jamdudum miserat de gente Francorum monachis, ut

in omnibus ecclesiis Anglorum decanos constitueret et præpositos” (Gesta 374) [{because}

William intended to set a certain foreign monk over them—one of those monks for whom he had already sent from the French nation, to set as deans and priors in all the churches of the

English (Swanton 6 8 )]. It can be seen here why Victorian editors saw these Hereward

legends as expressions of racial hostility. Yet the fear of foreign interlopers that is plainly expressed here results from a fear of what such a foreign interloper would do to the abbey’s property. It is their positions as “deans and priors” that give the French the authority to decide what is done with local ecclesiastical property. This fear over loss of control over

82 property is expressed throughout the Hereward cycle much more frequently than, and underlies, the fear of French foreigners, which only appears intermittently. Later in the

Gesta there is a scene in which a Norman knight who had been captured by Hereward and then released explains to the king the outlaws’ reasons for their rebellion. First he echoes the excuse the monks made earlier for why the rebellion had occurred: “‘disposuerat enim regis veneranda majestas transmarinos monachos in omnibus ecclesiis Anglorum decanos et præpositos constitui debere’” (380) [‘because his respected majesty the king had given instructions that monks from overseas should be appointed deans and priors in all the churches of the English’ (Swanton 72)]. Then he adds:

“Qua de re monachi loci illius alienis subjici verentes, magis laborare maluerunt quam in servitutem redigi, exules, præjudicatos, exhereditatos, et suos parentes iccirco ad se congregantes, suum locum et insulam non insigniter de eis et de aliis munierunt.” (Gesta 380)

[“For this cause the monks of that place, fearing to be subjected to foreigners, rather preferred to toil than to be compelled to render an easement, and gathering to themselves for this purpose outlaws, the condemned, the disinherited, and their relatives, they strengthened their place and the island remarkably with those and with others.”]

Repeatedly in such accounts, the emphasis is laid upon the fear of local houses that they might lose control of their property once a Norman abbot is put in charge. One of the frequent complaints in these chronicles is that the new abbots siphoned off the wealth and property of the English abbeys for the benefit of their original monasteries on the continent

(Knowles 117). Generally among the monastic chroniclers of the generation following the conquest the amount of strife between new Norman abbots and their monks was exaggerated

(Knowles 116). Yet even if the fears were unfounded, their existence was a powerful motivating force for making a hero out of an outlaw. It is such a context of suspicion and

83 friction between existing English abbeys and foreign abbots that is assumed by the Gesta and provokes the monks to revolt. Susan Ridyard has recently challenged the assumption of

Norman disrespect for the property and saints of the English abbeys CCondignd”). But whether or not there really was widespread conflict, the Gesta itself assumes that the local interests of the abbeys would suffer under a foreign abbot, and indeed, Peterborough under the Norman Abbot Turold is one of the few undisputed examples of serious Norman mismanagement.

Abbot Turold is one of the major villains of the Gesta. although other sources make clearer why he is given this role. As the new Norman abbot, Turold arrived in June of 1070 at Peterborough with a private army of 160 knights many of whom he settled on abbey lands in return for military service. The resentment that the local monks felt at this imposition is made explicit in many of the documents of the period. The Gesta Herewardi asserts that these knights were intended to protect Turold from Hereward, whose continuing presence near Peterborough was a constant threat to the Norman interloper. The Chronicle of Hugh

Candidus openly displays the intense unpopularity of this new abbot and his policies:

Iste abbas per annis (sic) xxviij abbacie magis obfiiit quam profuit. Quo mortuo, reminiscentes monachi omnia mala que perpessi sunt, dederunt regi usque ad trecentas marcas argenti quo possent habere eleccionem suam, et pene omnia de altari acceperunt. (Hugh 8 6 )

[The abbot himself for the space of twenty-eight years was rather a mischief than an advantage to the abbey, and when he was dead, the monks, remembering all the ills which they had suffered, gave unto the king for the right of electing a new abbot as much as three hundred marks of silver, and they took almost all of it from the altar. (Mellows and Mellows 44)]

The desire for independence from outside control displayed in this account is characteristic of these fenland abbeys, as is emphasized by a story that Hugh Candidus tells about Ælfsy,

84 abbot of Peterborough, who had been ordered by the king to take control of Ramsey abbey.

Hugh remarks, “Set ille amiciciam quam inceperat uicinis suis seruans,. . . abbatem illis ex propria congregacione constituit, libertatemque imperpetuum donauit (Hugh SO). [But following the law of friendship with his neighbors, as had ever been his wont,... [Ælfsy] gave them an abbot of their own congregation, and granted them freedom for ever (Mellows and Mellows 26).] An example of a good abbot, Ælfsy grants the fenland abbey the right of self-government. Turold, with his willingness to put church lands into the hands of Norman knights, thus making the fenland abbey more, rather than less, dependent upon the aristocracy that surrounded the king, was clearly a menace to the established values of this monastic culture.

The Gesta depicts the rebellion at Ely as being motivated by the fears of the Ely monks that such things as were happening at Peterborough would happen there under a

Norman abbot. We have already seen that some monks took an active role in the fighting. It is clear from statements in the Gesta that these were not unruly members acting on their own, but that the fenland abbeys had been involved from the first in the rebellion around them, and had in fact been instrumental in setting it afoot. Hereward is invited by the monks themselves to join the rebels at Ely: “Et hoc enim nominatim ex parte abbatis Elyensis ecclesiæ Turstani et monachorum ei magis proponunt et mandant, quorum dominio insula quidem erat, et a quibus et per quos magis contra regem muniebatur” (Gesta 374) [They extend and send this [invitation] expressly on behalf of Thurstan, abbot of the church at Ely, and his monks, who had lordship of the Isle, by and through whom it was put in a greater state of defence against the king]. Such open hostility on the part of the monks, we are told.

85 arose from their fear of having Norman abbots put over them, as happened at Peterborough and elsewhere. Even in cases where the new Norman abbots were careful of the abbey’s property, life in Norman dominated monasteries would be fundamentally changed. The new

Norman lords and abbots had a different vision for the organization and rights of the abbeys and the surrounding lands.

H. R. Loyn has observed that under the Normans ecclesiastical wealth was concentrated in the hands of powerful churchmen, who built great churches in the most affluent parts of their sees as symbols of Norman magnificence (332). But Norman innovations were not limited to architectural redesigning of the Anglo-Saxon abbeys. The structure of the Anglo-Saxon monastic estates also changed radically in nature in the early

Norman years, Loyn notes, for the Normans “had a new political vision” (334). It has been claimed that the new Norman abbot Turold’s establishment of Norman knights on abbey lands marked the beginning of feudalism in England (Hart 39-40). Besides the loss of abbey property to Norman plunderers, the monastic chronicles frequently complain of the loss of lands due to the new knight service being demanded of them (Knowles 117-8). We have already discussed how property was lost when thegn lands went to Norman successors, as in the case of Ely’s lands held by William de Warenne. When the abbeys’ claims to such lands were occasionally recognized, it did not usually mean a return of those lands. Instead, the

Norman occupier of the lands was often granted the property he was already holding in the form of an enfeoffment, which resulted in the abbeys having to undertake a new responsibility, that of military service (Miller 67).

86 This demand for military service was laid upon the fenland abbeys with an unusually heavy hand. The army that accompanied Abbot Turold to Peterborough is a case in point.

Knowles notes that Turold “saddled Peterborough in perpetuity with a military service— almost without parallel among the religious houses—of sixty knights” (114). The Gesta itself asserts that Turold did this explicitly in order to protect himself from Hereward, who was still loose in the countryside;

Pro quo memoratus abbas plures res ecclesiæ suæ et possessiones multas militibus erogavit ut haberet præsto semper militare auxilium ad expugnandum Herewardum, ex quibus ei statim ipse abbas infestabatur, ac illos eum pro servitio terræ persequi constituit. (Gesta 395)

[To this purpose, the aforesaid abbot distributed much of the wealth of his church and many of the estates to knights in order to have military assistance constantly ready to attack Hereward, on account of the abbot having regularly been harassed by him, and he ordered that they should attack Hereward as service for their land.]

Hereward’s status as a folk hero in the fenlands, based upon his successful defiance of

William and his agents, made him a center of resistance to the changes instituted by the

Normans.

William quickly recognized the local and independent minded nature of the fenland communities. Cyril Hart observes that Ely and Bury St. Edmunds soon had bodies of knights imposed upon them as well as Peterborough, and adds, “Not for nothing did these three abbeys carry an imposition of knight service almost equalling the demands made on all the rest of the English abbeys put together” (39-40). At Ely, by 1072 the abbey was responsible for providing forty knights for the king’s army to aid in the Scottish campaign (Miller 67-8).

When William successfully captured the Isle of Ely from Hereward and the other rebels, he

87 stationed a body of knights there. Miller describes how this occupation of the abbey itself led to occupation of the abbey’s lands:

At first these knights were quartered in and about the monastery; but so troublesome did this arrangement prove that many of the great men who had intruded upon the abbey’s property were allowed to hold their usurped estates in feudum in return for military service. ( 6 8 )

Significantly, Domesday records indicate that Hereward himself had likely been a tenant of

Peterborough and Crowland abbeys, and his relationship to Peterborough was so close that in some of the local chronicles he is made to be the nephew of Peterborough’s Abbot Brand, the

Norman Turold’s predecessor (Hart 29-30). Although, as I will discuss in the next chapter, this is unlikely to have been true, it is clear that he had a very real and personal interest in what was being done with the fenland abbeys’ lands. His links to Ely are made clear in the accounts of the siege of Ely which we will be examining in a number of sources in a later chapter.

Although Hereward was not a monk, it is certain that the monastic authors who wrote about him by and large considered him to be representative of their concerns. As I noted above, Hugh Candidus says of him “siquidem et ipse Hereuuardus homo monachorum erat”

(Hugh 79) [and indeed Hereward was himself a man of the monks (Mellows and Mellows

40)]. The Peterborough version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle remarks, “Pa herdon ôa munecas of Burh sægen [>æt heora agene menn wolden hergon {jone mynstre, ])et wæs

Hereward 7 his genge” [Then the monks of Peterborough heard it said that their own men, namely Hereward and his band, wished to plunder the monastery (Garmonsway 1070 E)].

Such references by the monks themselves associating Hereward with them is particularly surprising in light of the fact that both of these remarks come in passages that clearly blame

88 Hereward for the sack of Peterborough abbey. In both cases, however, excuses are made for the outlaw. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle continues.

Pet wæs forôan ^et hi herdon sæcgen l>et se cyng heafde gifen t>et abbotrice an frencisce abbot, Turolde wæs gehaten, 7 l>et he wæs swiôe styme man 7 wæs cumen {)a into Stanforde mid ealle hise frencisce menn.

[because they had heard it said that the king had given the abbacy to a French abbot called Turold, and that he was a very ferocious man and had arrived at Stamford with all his French followers.]

And after detailing the sack of the abbey, it adds, “sægdon [)et hi hit dyden for ôes mynstres holdscipe” (Clark 1070 E). [They [the outlaws] said they had done this out of loyalty to the monastery (Garmonsway 1070 E)]. Holdscipe is a particularly interesting word, occurring in the Old English microfiche concordance only twice and both times in the Peterborough

Chronicle and in accounts of rebellions against the king (1070 and 1087). Hugh Candidus even expands upon the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s apology,

Tamen dixerunt quia pro fidelitate ecclesie hoc facerent, et melius ilia Dani seruarent ad opus ecclesie quam Franci, siquidem et ipse Hereuuardus homo monachorum erat, et ideo aliquanti credebant ei. Set et ipse sepe postea iurauit se bona intencione hoc fecisse quia putabat illos uincere Willelmum regem, et ipsos possessuros terram. (Hugh 79)

[They pretended to do this out of loyalty to the church, for they said the Danes would guard these things better than the Frenchmen for the use of the church. And indeed Hereward was himself a man of the monks, and for that reason many believed him. But he oft times swore in after times that he had done this of good intention, because he supposed they were conquering king William, and would themselves possess the land. (Mellows and Mellows 40)]

The amazing contention that Hereward was not so much robbing the abbey as protecting it seems less ludicrous if one considers Hereward’s symbolic value within fenland culture. The author of the Gesta Herewardi. not content with simply explaining Hereward’s well-meaning motives for sacking the abbey, goes on to assert that after the attack a vision of St. Peter

89 himself appeared to rebuke Hereward, who then returned all the stolen goods the following day. More sober sources assure us that most of the treasure was lost to the Danish allies of

Hereward. But such a kid-gloves handling of Hereward in monastic records recognizes that he was a local champion, and reprehensible as some of his actions may have been, he was fighting for the same principles the monks were defending. They were willing to forgive him much, because he epitomized for them the spirit of tenacious resistance to encroachments upon their traditionally established rights that was characteristic of the fenland monasteries in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Written during this time of overwhelming concern for the real and imagined losses that the abbey had suffered in the early years of William’s reign, and amidst a flurry of literary activity promoting the cults of local saints as an aid in protecting the abbey’s property and reinforcing claims for lost property, the Gesta Herewardi similarly concentrates upon issues of rightful ownership and the commitment to defend traditional claims to property. Viewed in this context, its presence at the conclusion of a carefully constructed cartulary, singlemindedly devoted to asserting the abbey’s position as an established and rightful landholder, is more logical than it at first appears. For the monastic communities of the fenlands, the Gesta Herewardi presented a hero who exemplified the kinds of loyalty to tradition that, practiced by the monks, would ensure that the saints’ property would be protected under their care. What makes the Gesta Herewardi such a unique work, though, is that it was constructed from popular legends, and some sparse historical data, about a secular hero who was a force of disruption and anarchy in the post-conquest years, but who is nevertheless transformed in the hands of the monastic narrator into a champion of traditional

90 order. In the next chapter I will examine what we know about the genuinely popular stories that circulated about Hereward, their relationship to the outlaw stories we know of from the

Anglo-Saxon period, and will look more closely at the Gesta itself for what it can tell us about the transformation of Hereward from secular outlaw hero into a monastic champion.

91 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Câlin, William G. The Old French Epic of Revolt: Raoul de Cambrai. Renaud de Montauban. Gormond et Isembard. Paris: Librairie Minard, 1962.

Chronicon Aneliæ Petribureense. J. A. Giles, ed. 1845. Reprinted, New York: Burt Franklin, 1967.

Clifford, James. "On Ethnographie Allegory." In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, pp. 98-121. James Clifford and George E. Marcus, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

Crane, Susan. Insular Romance. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1986.

Darby, H. C. The Medieval Fenland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940.

Darby, H. C. and E. Miller. “Political History.” The Victoria History of the Countv of Cambridge and the Isle of Elv. Vol. 2: 377-419. London: Oxford University Press, 1948.

Felix. Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac. Bertram Colgrave, trans. and ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956.

Fleming, Robin. Kings and Lords in Conquest England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Freeman, E. A. History of the Norman Conquest. Vol. IV. Second ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1876.

Gaimar, Geffrei. Lestorie Des Engles. Thomas D. Hardy & Charles T. Martin, eds. Rolls Series vol. 91: 1 & 2. Kraus Reprints, 1966.

Gesta Herewardi. In Geffrei Gaimar. Lestorie Des Engles. Thomas D. Hardy & Charles T. Martin, eds. Rolls Series vol. 91:1. Kraus Reprints, 1966.

Gransden, Antonia. “Baldwin, Abbot of Bury St. Edmunds, 1065-1097.” Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies. IV (1981): 65-76.

92 Hart, Cyril. “Hereward ‘The Wake.’“ Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society. LXV (1974): 28-40.

Hayward, John. “Hereward the Outlaw,” Journal of Medieval History 14 (1988): 293-304.

Hugh Candidus. The Chronicle of Hugh Candidus: A Monk of Peterborough. William T. Mellows, ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1949.

Knowles, Dorn David. The Monastic Order in England. Cambridge: Cambridgze University Press, 1949.

Liber Eliensis. Blake, E. O., ed. Camden Third Series, Vol. 92. London: Royal Historical Society, 1962.

Lincolnshire Domesdav and the Lindsev Survev. The. Eds. C. W. Foster and T. Longley. Homcastle: W. K. Morton and Sons, 1924.

Loyn, H. R. Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest. Second Edition. London: Longman, 1991 (1962).

Martin, Janet D. The Cartularies and Registers of Peterborough Abbev. Peterborough: Northamptonshire Record Society, 1978. Northamptonshire Record Society vol 28.

Mellows, Charles and William T. Mellows, trans. The Peterborough Chronicle of Hugh Candidus. William T. Mellows, ed.. Peterborough: The Peterborough Natural History, Scientific, and Archaeological Society, 1941.

Michel, Francisque. Chroniques Anglo-Normandes. Vol. 2. Rouen, 1836.

Miller, Edward. The Abbev and Bishopric of Elv: The Social Historv of an Ecclesiastical Estate from the Tenth Centurv to the Earlv Fourteenth Centurv. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951.

Ridyard, Susan J. “Condigna Veneratio: Post-Conquest Attitudes to the Saints of the Anglo- Saxons.” Anglo-Norman Studies. IX (1986): 179-206.

— . The Roval Saints of Anglo-Saxon England: A Studv of West Saxon and East Anglian Cults. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Round, J. H. Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Xlth and Xllth Centuries. London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1909 (1895).

—. In The Victoria Historv of the Countv of Essex, vol 1. H. Arthur Doubleday and William Page, eds. Westminster: Constable, 1903.

93 Stenton, F. M., “Medeshamstede and its Colonies.” In Historical Essays in Honor of James P. Tait, pp. 313-26.

Swanton, Michael, trans. Three Lives of the Last Englishmen. New York: Garland Publishing, 1984.

94 CHAPTERS

THE GESTA HEREWARDI AND THE MAKING OF A MONASTIC HERO

We are so accustomed to thinking of the late medieval ballads and plays about Robin

Hood as the fullest flowering of outlaw-hero literature that we have lost sight of the fact that the earliest extant life of an outlaw written in England is the twelfth-century Gesta

Herewardi. In fact, the body of literature about Hereward, of which the Gesta forms only a part, makes up the largest cycle of medieval outlaw-hero legendry in England. One of the most surprising qualities of the Gesta is that it is a secular life of an outlaw probably commissioned and produced at a monastery during a period of intense hagiographical writing. As I noted in the last chapter, the Gesta was most probably written at Ely before

1131 during the period of rapid hagiographical production spurred on by Bishop Hervey.

What would have been less surprising in this context to a medieval audience, if more startling to a modem one, is if the outlaw had been turned into an exemplar of the monastic life by being made to renounce his wild youth and perhaps join a monastery. A model for the transformation of an outlaw and soldier into a paragon of monastic piety could be found as close to home as the stories of St. Guthlac (6747-714), who was associated with the local monastery at Crowland.

95 According to the Gesta Herewardi. which tells us all we know of Hereward before the siege at Ely in 1070, Here ward's youth was spent like Guthlac's in establishing his reputation as a famous and skillful leader of soldiers. But while Guthlac returned from his exile abroad to take up the life of a monk, Hereward returned to fight for the property that had been taken from his family. It is not difficult, though, to imagine how the youthful adventures of Hereward could, like those of Guthlac, have been made a prelude to a lengthy description of his growing piety, resulting later in a renunciation of worldly ambition and a turn toward the monastic life. Indeed, the Gesta does depict Hereward's wife, Turfrida, renouncing the world and retiring, significantly, to the monastery at Crowland. Given the more conventional alternatives available to him, then, it is particularly surprising that a monastic author would focus the Gesta around the period his hero spent as an outlaw, and yet this is clearly the portion of Hereward's life that most interests him. It is the outlawed

Hereward that the Gesta depicts, and it pays little attention to other aspects or periods of his life.

The Gesta Herewardi presents us with an early and suprisingly varied collection of outlaw stories, but it has been criticized by modem scholars on a number of grounds. They have generally felt that despite its focus on one man it possessed little unity, that it remained a haphazard assemblage of folktales, history, and hearsay. Liebermann remarked that it is made up of “Steine... herausgerissen aus der Wirklichkeit des 11. und 12. Jh. und willkürlich zusammengefugt” (23) [stones ... pulled from the reality of the 11th and 12th centuries and arbitrarily thrown together]. His observation is an astute commentary on the Gesta's use of themes and materials, for the author of the work certainly constructed it around issues of

96 concern to his twelfth-century audience. His success at this is manifest in the immediate

popularity the work enjoyed, as indicated by its use in twelfth and thirteenth-century

chronicles from Ely, Peterborough, and Crowland. But its appeal was not limited to the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, for the Gesta continued to be a source from which Hereward

material was drawn, directly or indirectly, up through the fifteenth century. Such immediate and lasting local popularity, its amazing success at presenting a meaningful and appealing account of an outlaw to the monastic communities of the fenlands, argues against the Gesta having been “arbitrarily thrown together.” Ultimately Liebermann's view of the Gesta. a view that has been embraced rather than challenged in the scant critical material on the work, overlooks the evidence I will survey below of its conscious and careful design.

The Gesta has also been criticized for its poor Latin style, its editors remarking that

“the scribe was comparatively ignorant of Latin, and the author was probably not much his superior in that respect” fGesta Hi). On this charge, its detractors cannot be gainsayed.

Similarly, as a historical account of the events it records, the Gesta also leaves much to be desired. It is patently inaccurate in almost every case for which we have corroborating historical data, and it must have been obvious to many of those in the fenlands who read it that its versions of certain key events, such as the sacking of Peterborough, were more fanciful than accurate. In light of these deficiencies it is all the more remarkable that the

Gesta's accounts of Hereward’s actions remained the most influential and popular versions of the outlaw's stories throughout the Middle Ages. The work may have had serious historical flaws, but for the audience who read, copied, and preserved it for several centuries its depiction of a local outlaw as a champion of monastic privileges appears to have had a

97 peculiar and enduring appeal. How a local outlaw was transformed by the author of the

Gesta into a monastic hero requires a closer examination of the work's composition and of the hints we can gather from the work itself about how its author molded his material to fit his purposes.

It is important first to recognize that the Gesta Herewardi is more a history of

Hereward's outlawry than it is a life of the man. At the beginning we get a few brief sentences painting a description of Hereward's physical appearance and giving us a conventional description of a wild youth. This passed, the author quickly moves on to his hero's outlawry and begins relating his adventures while in exile. The bulk of the work then focuses on Hereward's actions as an outlaw. Likewise, the work ends almost immediately after we are told of Hereward's reconciliation with the king, and in a sentence or two the remainder of his life is summed up by noting that for many years until his death he served the king and remained devoted to his friends. It is not, then, a work about a man who was of interest to the monastic communities and who also happened to be an outlaw. Instead, it is a work about a man who was of interest to the monks because he was an outlaw.

Why a secular outlaw was of such interest to the monks of these fenland abbeys is a question that we need to answer if we are to understand the Gesta Herewardi. Because of the author's difficulties in making an ordered narrative from the mass of oral tradition and fragmentary written accounts out of which he constructed his story, it is possible to gain glimpses through the narrative's cracks and seams into how the author, most likely the

Richard of Ely discussed above in Chapter 2, deliberately reshaped the legends available to him. Additionally, because of the richness and variety of the surviving Hereward material it

98 is possible to compare the account of the rebellion of 1070 as told in the Gesta Herewardi with accounts recorded in other chronicles, thereby gaining further insight into the processes

of shaping and modification undergone by the legends in the Gesta.

An understanding of how the Gesta Herewardi was constructed must begin with the preface to the work itself for in the preface the author discusses the materials he used and the process of writing he followed in producing the work. Unfortunately, the description of events given in the preface is confusing enough that scholars who have tried to discuss this work have come to no agreement on the meaning of several key passages. One of the most remarkable examples of confusion resulting from a misreading of the Gesta's preface is

H.W.C. Davis's claim in an appendix on Hereward to his classic work England Under the

Normans and Angevins that the English manuscript on which the Gesta is in part based is an

“Old English poem about Hereward” (525). Upon what evidence he based his claim that the

English life was a poem is not c l e a r . 15 Nevertheless, this misconception has been propagated even up to the most recent book on Hereward, a 1995 volume by Victor Head that appears to have relied more upon earlier critics than upon the available primary sources.

More troubling is that Davis's appendix remains, along with Freeman's (on which see the previous chapter), the standard reference even for scholars engaged in a careful examination of the sources of the extant Hereward narratives. Some of the confusion over the Gesta's sources could be eliminated by an attentive re-reading of the preface and a careful

15 It is possible that he had in mind H. Paul's argument that Hereward's cry of "Ollae, ollae, bonae ollae et umae; omnia vasa haec fictilia et optima," when he enters William's camp disguised as a potter, could be translated into English alliterative verse as: "Greofan, greofan, / gode greofan and croccan // Eal(le) t)as læmenan / fatu ^)a selestan" (Grundriss der germanischen Philologie [Strassburg 1900-9] ii, 1088, cited in R. M. Wilson, The Lost Literature of Medieval England. London: Methuen, 1970, 114). 99 reconstruction of the sequence of events it describes. I will attempt to do this below, first outlining what I take to be the general points of the preface before preceding on to examine some of the difficulties in detail.

The preface to the Gesta Herewardi takes the form of a direct address from the author to an unidentified person who appears to have been the motivating force behind the writing of the Gesta. In the last chapter 1 argued that it is probable that the Gesta Herewardi was written at Ely in the time of Bishop Hervey (1109-1131) by a monk named Richard, and that the person addressed in the preface was the bishop himself. It appears, then, that a monk of

Ely by the name of Richard together with others of the abbey and Bishop Hervey were interested in the heroic tales about Hereward that they had heard from the local fenland people and from older monks. During the telling of the stories there was mention made of a written English account of the outlaw’s adventures. The information that such a work existed was passed on to the bishop:

De quo enim cum nos quodam in loco audisse modicum Anglice conscriptum professi fliimus, subito coegit vestra dilectio illud ad præsens perquiri, et mox in Latinam linguam transferri, subjugens etiam et ea quæ a nostris audire contigerit, cum quibus conversatus est, ut insignis miles magnanimiter vivens. (Gesta 339)

[For when I informed you that I had heard somewhere that a short account had been written about him in English, you were immediately kind enough to have it sought out; and soon it was translated into Latin, with the addition of things we happened to hear from our own people with whom he was familiar, living a distinguished life as a great warrior. (Swanton 45)]

This English narrative was clearly not located at Ely or it would not have needed to be

“sought out.” Furthermore, Richard's description of events suggests that it may have been translated into Latin at the bishop's behest before it came into Richard's hands, where local stories were added to it. This translated English account appears to have been unsatisfactory,

100 for some reason, since Richard and his assistants continued to search for other written accounts of Hereward's deeds, although with only limited success:

Quibus quidem vestris desideriis satisfacere cupientes, multis in locis perquirendo manus convertimus, et penitus nihil invenimus, præter pauca et dispersa folia, partim stillicidio putrefactis et abolitis et partim abscissione divisis. (Gesta 339)

[So, wanting to satisfy your wishes, I took care to enquire in many places, yet found nothing complete - only a few loose pages, partly rotten with damp and decayed and partly damaged by tearing. (Swanton 45)] These few leaves of a damaged and nearly illegible manuscript were also written in English, but this time by an identified author, one Leofric the Deacon, Hereward's priest at Bourne.

Richard attempted to translate these pages, but his ignorance of the language and the battered condition of the manuscript combined to produce a rather haphazard rendering of the English original. Although it is unclear what portion of the Latin narrative that resulted derives from the English life, it has been commonly thought that the English manuscript must have focused on the early life of the outlaw, the very thing that the chronicle accounts take no notice of. Joost De Lange has noted that the Gesta “consist(s) of two rather unequal parts,” the first of which is a romantic treatment of Hereward's youthful exile abroad, and the latter a

“semi-historical” treatment of his activities in England (5). For De Lange, “This [apparent division in the Gestal proves that the statements about his sources are probably correct,” (5) that is, that Richard relied on an English romance for the first part, and on oral legend for the second.

Richard was still dissatisfied with the material he had collected, remarking that he was “semper majora expectantes et necdum penitus aliquid invenientes” (Gesta 340) [always hoping for more [written accounts] but still finding nothing in full” (Swanton 45)]. As

101 evidence of his efforts to gather more material he tells of the search for a large book that he had heard about:

Quos tandem vana spes diu delusit, sicut ab initio a quibusdam dicentibus quia in illo et illo loco magnus liber est de gestis ejusdem, ad quæ mittentes quæ promissa fiierant [non] comparuerunt. fGesta 340)

[For a long time [my assistants] were deluded by a vain hope, from the beginning by certain sayings that in such and such a place there is a great book about his [Hereward’s] deeds, which was sent for, but what had been promised did not appear.]

This book would have been more than just another source for Richard. It could have provided him with the structure and foundation upon which to assemble his life of the outlaw. Without it the task was considerably more difficult. We can appreciate Richard's dilemma. He claims to have little skill as a writer, “vestræ prudentiæ nidi stile relinquentes crudam materiam vel alicujus exercitati ingenii studio, minus dialecticis et rhetoricis enigmatibus compositam et omatam” (Gesta 340). [I leave this raw material, written in a rough style, to your care and to the efforts of some trained person, [since it is] arranged and set out in a less ornate and complex manner (Swanton 45)]. His apology for lack of skill and his request that someone more skilled in writing should polish and correct his efforts could be seen as merely examples of his participation in a common humilitas topos, but it is a

Judgment which modem critics have supported rather than challenged. Added to his own lack of confidence was the inherent problem of how to write an acceptable outlaw's life for an ecclesiastical audience. As models for his work he had, we can imagine, mainly hagiographical writings and some celebrations of kings' deeds. But his source materials on

Hereward were less obviously didactic than these.

102 How to construct a coherent life of an outlaw largely from orally circulating tales is a task that would have likely given an experienced author pause. So, when Richard heard of a

“large book” already written on the topic, he must have been relieved, expecting that here was something which he could use as a model and a foundation for his own work. We can imagine the bitter disappointment he must have felt when the book proved to be impossible to obtain, and some of this frustration comes out in his use of phrases like “deluded by a vain hope” and “nothing of what was promised.” Left without a model, Richard was now thrown upon his own resources for pulling together the disparate strands he had collected. He apparently felt unequal to the task, for he adds, “Propterea quidem tunc omnino illud relinquentes, opus inceptum abscondimus” fGesta 340) [so giving up the search altogether, I abandoned the work I had begun” (Swanton 46)].

Meanwhile, however, the bishop had grown impatient to see what Richard and the others had collected, and wanted to read, if nothing else, at least the translation of the

English manuscripts that had been found. This episcopal interest spurred Richard to return to his task even without the authoritative structure of a long written life around which to build his work, and he revised what he had already written, trying to make a coherent story out of the jumble of folktale, half-truth, and exaggerated adventure he had collected.

One way that Richard made the task of harmonizing these materials easier was by drawing on his audience's familiarity with other similar local outlaw stories, thereby demonstrating how the Gesta's stories fit into the context of local popular oral narrative and aligning his work with an already familiar genre. Richard accomplishes this generic contextualization at the point where he turns from Hereward's adventures abroad to describe

103 the outlaw's activities in England. As the field of action shifts, Richard pauses to list the names of some of those in Hereward's gang. His lists of names seem to have come from several different sources, for the same names appear more than once, and with variations in spelling. Richard rarely seems to notice this. Yet even while he is presenting what are seemingly unedited lists of names, Richard interrupts the lists to comment on some of them and drop allusions to popular stories about these outlaws. Through his allusions to already familiar stories, Richard establishes for his audience a set of genre expectations about the

Hereward stories that will follow. To an audience that must have already been familiar with many of the local outlaw tales he alludes to, his mention of these outlaws and their adventures must have cued them to expect something similar from his account of Hereward's deeds in England. Richard thereby not only provides a context in which his audience can place the Gesta itself, but also solves some of the genre and structure problems that had plagued him from the beginning, thereby relieving some of the pressure on himself as an author to turn his collection of popular legends into something more like a literary work. As it turns out, he did not need to turn his collection of outlaw legends into hagiography as long as he could make his readers accept them on their own terms and in something more like their original form.

Richard's use of the outlaws' names and tantalizingly brief narrative snippets is a familiar technique to folklorists, who have called such abbreviated narratives “kernel narratives,” that is, shortened forms of stories used among people who interact with each other regularly (Allen 242 & n.l2). Such kernel narratives are common in oral storytelling communities and serve to remind an already knowledgeable audience about stories they have

104 heard before without necessitating their complete retelling. Their presence here is not only

further evidence of Richard's reliance on popular narrative for this portion of his work, but also suggests that Richard envisioned an audience that was part of the story-telling community for which these other outlaw stories would have been familiar, and for which an allusion was sufficient. But the very allusiveness of the references to the other outlaws' stories also indicates that Richard, like a good storyteller, took some care to keep the focus on what was of primary interest to him, the actions of Hereward, while fairly skillfully interweaving allusions to other local stories in such a way as to provide a fuller context for his central stories.

Richard's stories of Wulfric the Black and Wulfric the Heron can stand as examples of his presentation of these other outlaw narratives. Among the members of Hereward's band, he tells us, was one

Wluricus Niger, ex hoc huic cognomini sortitus, quia quodam tempore depicta facie carbonibus inter inimicos incognitos venit, ex quibus solo hastile x. prostravit. Et istius socius fuit quidam Wluricus Rahere, id est, Ardea, inde sic cognominatus, quoniam ad pontem de Wrokesham quadam vice erat, ubi adducti sunt iiij. fratres innocenter damnati ut crucifigerentur, camificibus perterritis, quia dicebant eum esse ardeam ad invicem illudentes ilium, pro quo enim innocentes viriliter erepti sunt, et inimici eorum nonnulli occisi. fGesta 572)

[Wulfnc the Black, who got his name because he had once daubed his face with charcoal and gone unrecognized into a garrison, laying low ten of them with a single spear. And his friend was a certain Wulfric Rahere, or “the Heron” so-called because he once happened to be at Wroxham Bridge where four brothers were brought who, although innocent, were to be executed; and terrifying the hangmen, who had called him “heron” in mockery, he manfully caused the innocent men to be released and killed some of their enemies. (Swaffham 67)]

Both of these narratives, despite their brevity, display what are perennial elements of outlaw stories: the clever outlaw who dons a disguise and invades the enemy's camp, the heroic fight

105 against uneven odds, the assistance lent to those who are being oppressed by unjust officers of the law, and the punishment of unjust authorities. Additionally, the story told of “the

Heron” is remarkably similar to that which appears in the seventeenth-century Child ballads

“Robin Hood and the Beggar I” (133), and “Robin Hood Rescuing Three Squires” (140), in both of which the outlaws rescue three young men about to be hanged by the sheriff, and either kill some of the sheriffs men with their arrows, or hang them. Such similarities are further evidence of a vital and long-lasting tradition of outlaw-hero storytelling in the Middle

Ages and after, of which the Gesta Herewardi provides early and important evidence.

The secular nature of these and other stories that Richard alludes to suggests that they were not circulating primarily in a monastic context, but that the stories passed freely between the monks and the local lay people. They also provide confirmation for Richard's claims to have interviewed those in the local populace who knew Hereward and his men, and to have “in multis probavimus et vidimus” [seen and tested in many matters] as many of those familiar with Hereward's exploits as he could find rOesta 340; Swanton 46). These stories demonstrate the involvement of Richard in a storytelling community in which outlaw narratives were common, and help to position the stories that follow them as growing out of that community in a way that he seems to assume his audience will recognize. Additionally, by invoking a context of presumably familiar outlaw stories, stories that appear to have contained motifs characteristic of outlaw-hero narratives from their beginnings, he provides legitimacy for his tales and his hero. When the Hereward stories he subsequently tells display similar classic outlaw-hero motifs, we expect them and are already prepared to accept them as evidence of the heroic nature of Hereward and his position as an outlaw hero.

106 Nevertheless, Richard did know that he was writing not just for the local community familiar with such tales, but also for the bishop, who was doubtless accustomed to a more polished style and elevated tone than the materials Richard had at hand promised to provide.

An idea of the extent to which Richard felt it necessary to rework his abandoned manuscript to make it acceptable to the bishop can be gained by considering the Gesta in relation to the portions of the Liber Eliensis that draw on it. It has long been recognized that some of the accounts of the siege of Ely found in Book II of the Liber Eliensis derive from the Gesta

Herewardi (Liber Eliensis xxxiv-xxxvi). Nevertheless, differences in presentation and phrasing have led to some confusion about the relationship between the works. Blake notes that “it is unlike the ILiber Eliensisi compiler's normal habit to interfere with the style and wording of his sources” and concludes that the differences between the two works derive from the Liber Eliensis's source itself, which must therefore have been different from the

Gesta we have preserved. Blake suggests that the Liber Eliensis author may have used an earlier, rougher translation of Richard's Hereward material for his source, the version in fact that Richard confesses to having initially abandoned. The differences between the Gesta

Herewardi and the portion of the Liber Eliensis drawn from it could then be explained by there having been a completely new translation and re-writing of the material between the version used in the Liber Eliensis and the final version of the Gesta in Swaffham's manuscript. Among other signs of extensive rewriting, Blake notes the repeated presence of

“/Yerww” in Richard's description of his reworking of the material in the Gesta. as for instance: “et vobis iterum in morem historiæ libellulum retexere” (Liber Eliensis xxxvi) [and writing anew the book again for you in the style of a history]. For Blake, Richard's emphasis

107 on the repetition of effort involved in his drafting of the account of Hereward implies that

“the author was not revising an earlier Latin text, but producing a new translation into Latin of stories which had come to him in the vernacular” (xxxvi). This seems the most simple and efficient explanation for the relationship of the documents we have and again presents

Richard as a more active agent in shaping his received materials than has yet been recognized.

In undertaking to write the Gesta Richard had assumed a substantial task that he seems to have feared was beyond his abilities as a writer. The demands of his material required that he be not only able to work in Latin, but also to at least read English with some fluency. Unfortunately his skills in either language do not appear to have been very well developed. In their edition of the Gesta. Hardy and Martin remark that in addition to

Richard's comparative ignorance of Latin, “there are... indications that he was not thoroughly conversant with the English language” (liii). The latter claim is based on such evidence as

Richard's apparent lack of awareness that the words he writes as “Utlamhe” and “Utlac,” both given as a surname for companions of Hereward, are both forms of the English utlah.

The difficulties Richard faced in translating the languages, and in moving from oral to written genres and conventions, may help to explain why his work, although locally popular in the Middle Ages, has not won critical approval in the modem period.

Richard's struggles with his sources may well have made it difficult for him to discuss them clearly in his preface to the Gesta. and this, perhaps is why this portion of the work has been particularly confusing for scholars. The story about the gathering of materials and writing of the text is told in a series of forward and backward chronological leaps, so that

108 it is often difficult to tell if Richard is elaborating on events that he mentioned earlier, or if he is introducing new ones. As we have seen, H. W. C. Davis's claim that the Gesta is based on an Old English poem is one such confusion of the preface account of the sources.

Another occurs in the introduction to Hardy and Martin's edition of the Gesta Herewardi. where they mention the English “dispersa folia and magnus liber, on which his life was based” although we have seen that the “magnus liber” is clearly referring to a large book that was rumored but never found and therefore could not have provided the basis for the Gesta

(liii). In his address to the bishop in the Gesta's preface, Richard states:

nuper nostræ parvitati vestra insinuavit fratemitas, interrogans si aliquid in illo loco ubi degebat de tanto viro conscriptum aliquis reliquerit. De quo enim cum nos quodam in loco audisse modicum Anglice conscriptum professi fuimus, subito coegit vestra dilectio illud ad præsens perquiri, et mox in Latinam linguam transferri, subjungens etiam et ea quæ a nostris audire contigerit, cum quibus conversatus est, ut insignis miles magnanimiter vivens. Quibus quidem vestris desideriis satisfacere cupientes, multis in locis perquirendo manus convertimus, et penitus nihil invenimus, præter pauca et dispersa folia, partim stillicidio putrefactis et abolitis et partim abscissione divisis. Ad quod igitur dum stilus tantundem fuisset appositus, vix ex eo principium a genitoribus ejus inceptum et pauca interim expressimus et nomen; videlicet primitiva insignia præclarissimi exulis Herwardi, editum Anglico stilo a Lefrico Diacono, ejusdem ad Brun presbyterum In quibus vero licet non satis periti aut potius exarare deleta incognitarum literarum, ad ilium locum tamen de illo usque collegimus ubi in patriam et ad pristinam domum reversus fratrem occisum invenit... (Gesta 339-40)

[...your brethren eked out our sparse information by enquiring whether anyone had left anything in writing about such a man in the place where he used to live. For when I informed you that I had heard somewhere that a short account had been written about him in English, you were immediately kind enough to have it sought out; and soon it was translated into Latin, with the addition of things we happened to hear from our own people with whom he was familiar, living a distinguished life as a great warrior. So, wanting to satisfy your wishes, I took care to enquire in many places, yet found nothing complete - only a few loose pages, partly rotten with damp and decayed and partly damaged by tearing. However, having taken up the pen, I have with difficulty extracted from it a few details as to his origin, his parents and reputation - that is to say the early achievement of the most famous outlaw Hereward, written down in English by the deacon Leofric, his priest at Bourne.... And although I'm not sufficiently expert at this, or rather, unable to decipher what is 109 obliterated in the unfamiliar writing, nevertheless I gather that on his return to the place of his own ancestral home, he found his brother killed - and so on. (Swanton, 45)]

Although there appear to be two manuscripts mentioned here, one sought out by the bishop, and a second, damaged one found by Richard himself, it is not entirely clear that the manuscript that the addressee had sought out and which “soon ...was translated into Latin” is distinct from that incomplete one mentioned just after it which was found as “a few loose pages, partly rotten with damp and decayed and partly damaged by tearing” and which was attributed to Hereward's chaplain, Leofric. The latter manuscript, it is clear, Richard himself translated with great difficulty, while his previous comments about an English manuscript are ambiguous as to whether the bishop who had it “sought out” also had it translated, or whether Richard did it himself. Thus, this section has been read in two ways: either taking it to mean, as I have, that there was one English manuscript supplied in translation by the

Bishop and another damaged manuscript translated by Richard; or that there was only a single English manuscript translated by Richard that is referred to twice.

The confusion surrounding the English manuscripts is only heightened when Richard attempts to describe what information he extracted from the latter one when he translated it.

Richard first claims that an English life of Hereward provided him with information about the “origin, [...] parents and reputation—that is to say the early achievements” of the outlaw.

But, if we are to assume that the English work dealt with Hereward's travels abroad, then what are we to make of Richard's statement made when demonstrating his ability to roughly translate the English: “1 gather that on his return to the place of his own ancestral home, he found his brother killed”? If the English narrative dealt with Hereward's early life abroad

110 then this sample translation must be from the very end of the narrative. While we can do no

more than conjecture, it nevertheless seems unlikely that Richard would select one of the last events in a narrative to demonstrate his proficiency at translating it. In fact, the brief synopsis he gives us sounds more like a beginning of a narrative about his English adventures than the end of one about his youthful exile. This remark, then, seems to suggest that the damaged English manuscript began with Hereward's return to England and therefore

leaves room for doubt about the source for Hereward's youthful “romantic” adventures.

One critic who seems to have considered the possibility that the English account only dealt with Hereward's deeds after his return to England is Timothy Jones, who has argued that the English life referred to by the author is actually the Peterborough Chronicle (108).

This would mean that only the bare bones of the siege account come from the English manuscript, and therefore would explain Richard's need for more substantial written sources.

But as a solution this would raise a whole new set of difficulties, not the least of which is that the Gesta's account of the events of 1070 bears no real resemblance to that of the Chronicle. as we shall see shortly when we examine the Gesta's version of the sacking of Peterborough.

Joost de Lange, beginning with the customary assumption that the youthful adventures come from the English life, makes a case for the relationship between the stories

in the early part of the Gesta and those told of Scandinavian heroes such as Grettir. He sees the first part of the Gesta as a more or less direct translation of the English life by Leofric, who, writing in the Danelaw, was likely to have been influenced by Scandinavian storytelling motifs and conventions in his own imaginative recreation of Hereward’s early life. It is true that the Gesta's account of Hereward's early adventures appears to have been

111 greatly influenced by Scandinavian storytelling, but if we are to believe our author about his sources, then the “few loose” and damaged pages that he was able to recover and translate would hardly have provided the fairly lengthy and complete accounts o f the outlaw’s youthful adventures that the Gesta gives us. It has been pointed out that these stories can be seen as working together to “illustrate the development of the youthful hero’s military skills in preparation for his later adventures, with successive adventures requiring the demonstration of increasingly greater mastery” (Jones 124-5). For the “few loose pages” to have been the basis for such a coherent account, we must assume far more authorial control and reconstruction of his sources on the part of the Ely monk than has formerly been granted to him.

Liebermann has suggested that the introduction of an English manuscript written by

Leofric was a trick on the part of Richard to give his work credibility, “denn jede sonstige

Spur von Leofric oder seinem Werke fehlt, auch bei den Erzahlem von Hereward's Thaten”

(24) [For there are no other traces of Leofric or his work, even in the telling of Hereward's deeds]. However, this is not quite accurate, for a Leofric the Deacon appears several times in the course of the Gesta as a leader of Hereward's troops and is characterized there as

“astutus semper erat in omni sui opere, et stultitiam simulare loco docti et sapienter agere”

(402) [astute in all his doings, and able to feign foolishness in place of learning - and cleverly so” (Swanton 86)]. Nevertheless it is an interesting possibility that Richard's old and authoritative English document (written, after all, by none other than Hereward's own priest, the notorious Leofric the Deacon who appears repeatedly in the Gestal that purportedly served as a source for the outlaw's parentage, birth, and youth may never have existed, but

112 may only have been an attempt to give a ring of authority to stories about the least documented portion of the outlaw’s life. If this was the case then Richard himself would have been the one who attached the name of Hereward to the folktale-based stories that make up the accounts of the outlaw's early life. However, Hardy and Martin have noted several places where confusions in the Latin of the Gesta are likely to have derived from an English exemplar imperfectly translated (liii). Some of these occur in the early portions of the Gesta dealing with Hereward's youth. Additionally, Swanton observes that the author of the

Gesta's “claim to have been translating directly from an Old English manuscript is supported by occasional paleographical details” (xxvi). But what these details are and where they occur in the Gesta he does not disclose.

When Richard makes the transition from writing about the events of Hereward's youth abroad to telling about his activities as an outlaw in England he pauses to tell us who

Hereward's companions were in his English adventures. These lists of names that I discussed above occur just at the point when, if he did have a written account of Hereward's youthful exile, Richard would have exhausted what that life could tell him and would have been cast back upon the circulating stories he had collected. In that case, the presence of these names, with their allusions to an orally circulating body of outlaw narrative, may serve to orient the reader to the shift in the nature and origin of the source material in the later part of the Gesta.

The shift in tone that takes place between the accounts of Hereward's exile abroad and those of his outlaw life in England have several times been commented on (Keen 11; De Lange 5).

The earlier material is usually characterized as “romance,” and the latter more as circulating legend. The presence of the lists of names and their associated stories, then, may be intended

113 to orient us to the genre shift that the Hereward material is undergoing at this point in the

Gesta. The presence of these names and stories at the point where the narrative shifts from the outlaw's youthful exile to his adult career in England would seem to support the argument that Richard used some written, and probably English, source for his tales of

Hereward's early career.

Too few of the existing chronicle sources on Hereward show an interest in him beyond the siege of Ely to give us a fair sense of whether stories of his youth were actually circulating in popular tradition in Lincolnshire and its environs in the eleventh century, or whether these stories were created by Richard or Leofric themselves. Beyond what the chronicles explicitly tell of Hereward, all we know about the spread of his legends is what the Pseudo-Ingulph chronicler from Crowland says in apparent reference to his adventures while in exile, that “in certaminibus plurimis et magnis præliis præclarus et invictus etiam apud suos adversaries publicaretur, ejusque gesta fortia etiam Angliam ingressa canerentur”

(Michel v) [he was lauded publicly as very renowned in many battles, and as unbeatable even among his own foes, and his courageous deeds began to be sung also in England]. It is likely, though, that the chronicler is here drawing on the Gesta Herewardi itself, which says, following the bear-slaying, “Qua de re provinciales eum in laudibus praeferebant, et mulieres ac puellae de eo in choris canebant, quod gravius inimicis erat” (Gesta 344) [And so the people of the region extolled him with praises, and the women and girls sang about him in their dances, to the great annoyance of his enemies (Swanton 48)]. Since Pseudo-Ingulph made use of the Gesta (Liebermann 47), his chronicle can hardly be considered an independent authority on the popular stories about the outlaw. Nevertheless, it is perhaps

114 worth noting that this same 14th century chronicler asserts that Hereward’s deeds “prout adhuc in triviis canuntur” (Michel vi) [are still sung of on the crossroads]. There is, thus, no source independent of the Gesta confirming that stories of Hereward's youth were circulating in England. If such stories were not in circulation, however, our author is quite capable of having re-worked commonly occuring folktales and legends of Scandinavian heroes to create stories of his own hero’s youth. As I will demonstrate, he (or, less likely, his source) freely re-worked some of them to eliminate contradictions among the stories that he was assembling and to better harmonize with the larger picture of the outlaw that the Gesta establishes. I will examine below how he consciously re-works material about Hereward’s knighting and his marriage in an effort to smooth out his narrative and serve his own rhetorical needs.

Not only has the Gesta's description of its sources been a point of controversy, but so has the place and time of its composition. Liebermann, for instance, argued that the Gesta was written about 1150 [24]). The confusing wording of the preface not only permits such arguments, but sometimes even seems to encourage them. For instance, in his direct address in the preface of the Gesta. the author says that “vestra... fratemitas” [your brethren] sought out information about Hereward “in illo loco ubi degebat” [in the place where he used to live] (Gesta 339; Swanton 45). This passage has encouraged speculation that the addressee might be the abbot of Peterborough (Jones 107, 108). If that were the case, and we did not take too seriously the author's claim of having interviewed men who actually fought with

Hereward, then the Gesta could have been written at a much later date, as the manuscript in which it is preserved dates from c. 1250. However, if, as I argued in the last chapter, the

115 addressee is the bishop of Ely, then “your brethren” (rather than the expected “our brethren” or “we”) might simply refer to the Bishop's secular clergy, as opposed to members of the monastic house.

Bishop Hervey was the first bishop of Ely, and it was under his guidance that the house made the transition to being a cathedral monastery. Typically relations between established monasteries and the bishops who gained control of them when they became cathedral monasteries were characterized by conflict (Knowles 274-76). At Ely, however, right from the start with Bishop Hervey the monastic house had significant institutional independence from the Bishop (Miller 75). This arrangement seems to have made the transition smoother at Ely than at some other houses, so that during Bishop Hervey's life the conflicts between the monks and the bishop that eventually surfaced during Bishop Nigel's episcopacy (1133-69) were not yet present (Knowles 271). Although a Peterborough provenance for the Gesta would explain why it was there in the 13th century for Robert of

Swaffham to copy, it ultimately confuses more than it explains. Whatever we may make of the sources used in the Gesta. those who argue for a provenance other than Ely must account for the knowledge it displays of Ely landscape, history, and such local customs as the form of the knighting ceremony as it was was carried out there (Gesta 368-69); and then there is the relative ignorance and confusion displayed about Peterborough history. As we shall see,

Richard reworks the robbing of Peterborough in ways that are hard to believe would be possible for a Peterborough author. For instance, while all known Peterborough accounts agree that the majority of the stolen items were lost at sea by the Danes, Richard has them all returned immediately by Hereward. It seems unlikely that if the Gesta. written nearly

16 contemporaneously with the major Peterborough accounts of the looting, had also been written at Peterborough that it could have gotten such a locally important bit of information wrong. No supporter of a Peterborough provenance has addressed these difficulties.

A simpler explanation for the presence of the Gesta at Peterborough is possible, and is even indicated in the preface itself. The author there claims that more than one monastic house was involved in the search for Hereward materials, and the most likely place to look after Ely would have been Peterborough, of which Hereward had been a tenant, and with which he had a close relationship. It will be recalled that in explaining Hereward’s motives for the sack of Ely, the Peterborough chronicler Hugh Candidus remarked that in later times

Hereward repeatedly asserted his genuine belief that he was protecting the things of the church from Norman despoilers. Hugh’s remark indicates continuing contact between the foundation and the outlaw, even after the sacking. If there was as much interest in the outlaw at Peterborough as there was at Ely, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Hugh’s

Chronicle give us reason to suspect that there was, then it does not seem unlikely that, like the Bishop, they were eager to see the Gesta Herewardi once it had been completed. A copy could easily have been sent, or the original could have been sent there for copying. Either way, it is not improbable that Peterborough should have had a copy of this work even if it was written at Ely.

Whatever line of interpretation we choose to adopt, there are, clearly, a variety of possible ways of reading the preface to the Gesta. My own reconstruction above of the events surrounding the Gesta's writing appears to me, though, as the most likely given what we do know of the local history. At the very least, the stringing together of events in the

117 preface prepares us for the picaresque structure of the Gesta. and itself mirrors the confused chronology of the Hereward stories that follow it.

It is perhaps fitting that we cannot firmly establish either the sequence of events or the sources that led to the creation of the Gesta Herewardi. for it is remarkably difficult to say much authoritatively about Hereward himself, despite his having been fairly copiously written about by near contemporaries. The Gesta tells us that he was outlawed under the reign of Edward the Confessor. No other source substantiates this. The date 1062 is often given as the actual date of the event, but that date derives only from the Pseudo-Ingulf chronicle, which itself drew on the Gesta. and is therefore of extremely questionable historical validity. Freeman observed that since a Lincolnshire Domesdav record (cited in

Chapter 2, p. 67 above) states specifically that Hereward held lands from Abbot Wulfketel

(1062-1086), then 1062 is the earliest date at which he could have forfeited those lands by his outlawry (iv. 826). It is certainly not the latest possible date, though, and it is quite conceivable that his flight might have been precipitated by his participation in the Ely rebellion of 1070. If so, then Richard may have constructed the story of Hereward's youthful outlawry in order to place his hero out of the country during the period of the Norman invasion, thereby avoiding a potentially embarassing explanation of why Hereward allowed the Normans to dispossess his family from their lands in the first place. The only events of

Hereward's life that we can feel fairly certain about, because of the wealth of independent sources, are his presence on the island of Ely when William was besieging it in 1070, and his involvement in the sack of Peterborough. Yet even in relating these well-documented

118 events, the idiosyncracies of Richard's account suggest that he substantially reshaped the material he received from legend and history.

According to all the local sources except the Gesta. the sack of Peterborough took place on June 2,1070, the day before Turold, the new abbot, was to arrive. At the invitation of the abbot and monks of Ely, Hereward and his men had recently joined with the Danish army of King Sweyn that had established itself at Ely. It was the provocation of Turold's appointment, we are told by both Hugh Candidus and the Peterborough version of the Anglo-

Saxon Chronicle, and the fear that the property of the abbey would be misused that led

Hereward to loot it prior to the arrival of the new abbot. As I have shown in Chapter 2, this chronology is intricately tied up with the apology that the Peterborough chroniclers advance on Hereward's behalf, and the timing of his attack before the arrival of the abbot lends credence to the claim that he was trying to protect the abbey's treasures from Turold (leaving aside, of course, the more cynical possibility that he was simply taking advantage of the abbey's temporary weakness and loss of leadership to steal from it). Had he been seeking to personally injure Turold himself and not worrying about the abbey's wealth, he would presumably have waited until the abbot had arrived, or else attacked him on the road. But the Peterborough accounts focus on the abbey's possessions that were stolen, and Turold, though motivating the action, enters the scene late.

Hugh Candidus gives the most expansive account o f the events, relating that

ipse Hereuuardus incitabat et inuitabat eos ut uenirent ad monasterium de Burch, et acciperent quicquid ibi erat in auro et argento et ceteris preciosis rebus, quia audierant quod abbas esset mortuus, et quod rex [Willelmus] dedisset abbaciam cuidam monacho Normanno Turoldo nomine, et quia ipse nimis austerus homo esset, et quod iam ad Stanford cum militibus suis uenisset, propterea festinauerunt ire et accipere quicquid inuenissent. (Hugh Candidus 77)

119 [Hereward himself invited and incited [the Danes] to come unto the monastery of Burgh, and take whatever was there in gold, in silver, and in other precious things, because they had heard that the abbot ws dead, and King William had given the abbacy to a certain Norman monk named Turold, who was in himself too austere a man. And because he had already come to Stamford with his knights, therefore they made haste to go and take whatever they could find. (Mellows and Mellows 39)]

In seeking to avoid Turold and his knights, the outlaws and Danes in Hugh's account appear

as raiders and not the heroic challengers of the abbot that Richard depicts in the Gesta. Hugh

presents a detailed list of stolen items, and then, keeping his eye on these possessions, tells

the story of Prior Æthelwold, who was taken by the Danes along with the treasures. After

the raid, the outlaws and the Danes returned to Ely, where Æthelwold ingratiated himself

with the Danes and won their trust. Meanwhile he was cleverly extracting the holy relics

from their reliquaries and eventually managed to have them sent to Ramsey Abbey. When

the Danes departed, Æthelwold, refusing their invitation to return with them and become a

bishop in Denmark, instead went back to Peterborough. Hugh tells us that except for the

relics saved by Æthelwold, everything else that had been taken was permanently lost to the

Danes. Some of the monks of Ramsey planned to keep Peterborough's relics, but the warlike

Abbot Turold threatened to bum down their abbey if they were not returned. So under this threat and with the aid of the prior of Ramsey, a friend of the redoubtable Prior Æthelwold, the relics were returned to Peterborough (Hugh 77-84). Hugh's account, then, remains fixed on the treasures of the abbey, and although it apologizes for Hereward's role (see Chapter 2 above), it does remain critical of his involvement. Richard's interest in the sacking of

Peterborough, however, is focused on other issues than what happened to the treasures, and,

in fact, he seems entirely ignorant of what was taken. Instead, he completely reworks the sequence of events and consequently the logic of the motives that lay behind it.

120 In contrast to the Peterborough chroniclers, the Gesta Herewardi places the sack of

Peterborough after Hereward's expulsion from Ely and Turold's establishment at

Peterborough. Turold and Ivo de Taillebois, Hereward's chief enemies in the Gesta. lead an army against the outlaws who have taken up refuge in the woods surrounding the fenlands.

Following a battle in which Hereward's clever tactics defeat and exhaust the more numerous heavy cavalry sent against them, Turold is taken captive by the outlaws. The resulting series of events is very similar to the capture of the sheriff of Nottingham in the Gest of Robvn

Hode. In the better known Robin Hood ballad. Little John lures the sheriff out into the forest where he is ambushed by the outlaws and made to swear an oath that he will no longer seek to harm the outlaws, but rather help them whenever he might. In return for his freedom, the sheriff swears the oath. Later, he betrays that oath and attempts to ambush Robin Hood and his outlaw band at an archery contest. In revenge, Robin Hood eventually slays the sheriff.

Similarly in the Gesta Herewardi. once Turold, like the Sheriff, is captured by the outlaws his freedom is won by paying a ransom of thirty thousand pounds. There is also apparently an oath or at least some kind of agreement involved, for when Turold later attacks Hereward again, Richard remarks that “sui foederis non recordantes nec beneficii, recompensationem addiderunt iterum debellare Herwardum et suos” (Gesta 395) [remembering neither [the outlaws'] kindness nor their agreement, they repaid Hereward by once more making war on him and his men (Swanton 82)].

According to Richard, Hereward is finally pushed into action against Peterborough only when he learns that Turold is using the resources of the abbey to pursue his grudge against him. Turold, Richard tells us, gave church estates to knights in return for their help

121 in fighting Hereward. To ensure that his readers did not overlook the gravity of this, Richard

carefully explains the deal the abbot made:

Pro quo memoratus abbas plures res ecclesiæ suæ et possessiones multas militibus erogavit ut haberet præsto semper militare auxilium ad expugnandum Herwardum, ex quibus ei statim ipse abbas infestabatur, ac illos eum pro servitio terræ persequi constituit. (Gesta 395)

[To this purpose, the aforesaid abbot distributed much of the wealth of his church and many of the estates to knights in order to have military assistance constantly ready to attack Hereward, on account of the abbot having often been harassed by him, and he ordered that they should attack Hereward as service for their land.]

It is this last act of betrayal, betrayal not only of the agreement that Turold seems to have

made with Hereward when he was ransomed, but also betrayal of his duty to the abbey, that drives Hereward to the attack on Peterborough in the Gesta account.

The fundamental difference between the Gesta's portrayal of the sacking of the abbey and that of all other historical sources lies in the degree to which the Gesta makes it an act of

personal vengeance. While Turold and Hereward do not meet in the other chronicle accounts, in the Gesta the sacking of the abbey is accompanied by an attempted assault on

Turold himself, who for all his threatening and warlike reputation is depicted as quailing in the face of the outlaws' attack: “simul omnem thesaurum ecclesiæ deprædavit, atque abbatem persecutus est, licet latitando cum suis evaserit” fGesta 395). [[Hereward] plundered all the treasures of the church and chased the abbot, although he and his men managed to escape by hiding themselves (Swanton 82)]. The Gesta's version of these events only serves to heighten Hereward's stature as a heroic warrior, for he does not hesitate to openly assault, in his own stronghold, the man handpicked by King William to control him, and does so after he knows his enemy has reinforced himself with knights. In the Gesta there

122 is no sneaking into the abbey before Turold arrives, but rather an open defiance of the power of the abbot to do anything to stop the outlaws. Richard's version of events is completely shaped by his assertion that the attack on the abbey was the result of a personal feud between

Hereward and Turold, and it thereby avoids the suggestion that Hereward's actions grew out of irreligious or anti-monastic feeling, or covetousness.

This distinction is made clear in the Gesta's account of the aftermath of the attack.

According to the Gesta. the night following the robbery St. Peter himself appeared to

Hereward in a vision and rebuked him for stealing the possessions of his church. As did St.

Æthelthryth at Ely (see Chapter 2), here St. Peter represents the long-term interests of the abbey as a whole, and not those of the particular abbot in charge. Once it is made clear to

Hereward that he has harmed not just Turold, but the abbey itself, “omnia quae abstulerat eadem hora reportavit” (396) [that very hour he carried back everything he had taken away

(Swanton 82)]. In contrast to the accounts of the Peterborough chroniclers, the Gesta shows no knowledge of what specifically was stolen and falsely asserts that Hereward returned the stolen goods almost immediately. That this action should be seen as clearing the outlaw of any charges of religious hostility is apparent when his return of Peterborough's property is followed by the only miraculous events recorded in the Gesta.

On their return trip from restoring Peterborough's treasures, the outlaws went astray in the forests during a storm. Suddenly a large dog came bounding up to them. Taking it for a local villager's dog, they followed it in the hope of finding the village, and thus determining where they were. Then mysterious lights suddenly appeared on the tips of the soldiers' lances, and could not be extinguished. With the aid of these lights, and with the

123 guidance of the animal, the outlaws found their way back to the main road. At dawn they discovered that their guide had been a large white wolf, and not a dog as they had supposed.

The animal then vanished before their amazed eyes, as did the lights on the lances, and they found themselves where they had wanted to be at their journey's e n d . 16 As noted above in

Chapter 2, such miraculous events, though commonplace in a saint's life, seem out of place in this resolutely secular and this-worldly outlaw's life. Their only purpose here seems to be to show the divine sanction given to Hereward's actions once he had returned Peterborough's treasures.

Richard consistently reworks the events surrounding the sacking of Peterborough, and shifts the motivation for the attack from simply concern over the property of the abbey to the more personal ground of a feud between Hereward and Turold. In doing so, Richard manages to exonerate his hero of the allegation that he was a despoiler of abbeys. It is important to Richard's larger presentation of Hereward as an unfailing friend and supporter of the fenland abbeys of Peterborough and Ely that his unfortunate assault on Peterborough be carefully explained away. He accomplishes this by reshuffling the order of events with a striking disregard for the actual sequence, and, in a way not unlike that of the later Robin

Hood ballads, by focusing the outlaw's animosity on a local officer rather than the king.

Such active and conscious reworking of events demonstrates that Richard did not just record the stories he heard, but exerted a great deal of shaping influence on the materials he collected.

16 Interestingly, this is Stamford, the very place that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Hugh Candidus place Turold on the day that Peterborough was sacked.

124 Another place where it seems likely that Richard has reshuffled the sequence of

events for his own purposes is in the two sections of the Gesta dealing with the knighting of

Hereward. In the story of the youthful hero’s growth into manhood and fame his striving for knighthood, as we should expect, comes early. The first stop that the young Hereward makes once he has been driven into exile is in Northumberland, at the court of his godfather,

Giseberht de Ghent. Hereward arrived at Christmas time, and Richard tells us that at

Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun, young aspirants for knighthood battled wild animals as a test of their prowess and courage. Among these animals was a bear that possessed several human characteristics including human intelligence; it was a descendant, in fact, of a legendary bear that had fathered a King of Norway. This marvelous animal attracted the attention of the young hero, and he wished to try his abilities against him, but Giseberht prevented him doing so because he feared that Hereward was too young. Such a setup is immediately familiar to readers of chivalric romance, who will recognize that this story is akin to those in which the young hero proves to his astonished elders that he already possesses the qualities necessary for knighthood. Hereward’s opportunity arrives suddenly, when to everyone's surprise but the reader's, the bear breaks free and runs amok. The court scatters before the marauding animal, and the bear advances on the chamber in which the women of the court have taken refuge, killing anyone who tries to oppose it. While the knights of the court are still preparing themselves to face this menace, Hereward intercepts the bear and after a short battle with it kills it and lifts it up in his arms, presenting it to the frightened court that quickly gathers around him.

125 Encounters with a fierce and marvelous animal are often, in folktales and romances, the way that the young hero proves his prowess, and in such a context usually result in his being knighted. Our expectation that Hereward will soon be knighted is furthered by the setting of this event. It takes place at the court of a relative and at a high religious holiday, with the bear being among the animals specifically there to test the aspirants' prowess. All of these elements were common in both real and romance knighting cerem onies. 17 infact, after assuring us that his feat earned Hereward the deep gratitude of his lord and lady, and the undying envy and dislike of the knights and pages of the household, we are told that

“Hujus ergo rei gratia locum et honorem cum militibus obtinuit; licet tunc militem fieri distulerit, dicens melius se virtutem et animum suum probare debere” (Gesta 344) [as a result of this deed he gained the status and rank of a knight, although at the time he put off being made a knight, saying that he ought to make a better trial of his courage and spirit (Swanton

48)]. This sudden reluctance on Hereward's part seems odd, especially since he had initially been among the aspirants to knighthood and wished to challenge this very bear for that reason. When this scene is considered in relation to the later scene in which Hereward is actually knighted, however, it begins to look as though Richard deliberately altered the ending of this story about Hereward in order to link him and his activities more closely with the abbeys of Peterborough and Ely. For he makes firm associations between the outlaws and the abbeys in the description of Hereward's acceptance of knighthood upon his return to

England.

17 See Léon Gautier's chapter on "The Admission to Chivalry" in Jacques Levron's Chivalrv.

126 Once Hereward returns to England an army of sorts begins to gather around him, formed of people attracted by his reputation for military skill. In addition to a handpicked corps o f soldiers, his force grew daily “ex effugatis et præjudicatis et ab exhereditatis”

(Gesta 368) [with fugitives, the condemned and disinherited (Swanton 64)]. It is at this point, when he is becoming the leader of his own army, that Hereward remembers that he has never been officially knighted. Rather than seeking out a secular lord or a relative to perform the ceremony, Hereward travels to Peterborough with two men, Gænoch and Winter

(identified in other places in the Gesta as one of Hereward's chief companions and a relative of his). At Peterborough Hereward is knighted by Abbot Brand, Turold's predecessor. The outlaw's companions are knighted by Wulfwine, the prior of Ely, who, we are told, was also a friend of Hereward's father. No independent Peterborough or Ely sources mention

Hereward's knighting at all, so we have only the Gesta as a source for this episode.

However, the Liber Eliensis confirms that there was, indeed, a Wulfwine who was

“prepositus” of the abbey of Ely, but does not say when he lived (Liber Eliensis 291). It is significant, though, that the knighting of Hereward and two of his chief men takes place at the hands of officials of the two great fenland houses of Ely and Peterborough: one being where the Gesta Herewardi was written, and the other where the final copy of it was preserved.

By depicting his hero's knighting at the hands of these monks Richard emphasizes the closeness of the relationship between the outlaw and the local abbeys. The usual custom was for the father of the prospective knight to perform the ceremony, or for some other father-figure, such as the king or another male relative to play the role (Gautier 109-114).

127 By having the heads of the two local abbeys involved in the knighting of this outlaw, whose own father is deceased, Richard depicts the abbeys as a symbolic father to Hereward and a sponsor of his activities. There is another symbolic significance in the knighting of

Hereward that the Gesta explicitly explores. In this knighting scene, Richard asserts that the

English had a tradition of knighting by clerics, but that the Normans objected to this custom.

He thus presents the power to knight as yet another traditional privilege of the English monasteries that was being threatened by the Normans. It is this threatened tradition that is highlighted during the Gesta's depiction of Hereward's knighting.

First, Hereward recalls that he has not yet been “morem suæ gentis gladio nec baltheo militari præcinctum” [girt with the belt and sword of knighthood according to the tradition of his race (Swanton 64)]. Then, he goes to Abbot Brand, “ut eum militari gladio et baltheo Anglico more præcingeret” (Gesta 368) [in order that he might gird him with the sword and belt of knighthood in the English tradition (Swanton 64)]. In order that we might be left with no doubts about the traditionality of Hereward's actions, Richard explains,

Idcirco enim a monacho se et suos milites fieri voluit, et quoniam a Francigenis constitutum audierat, quod si quis a monacho vel a clerico seu ab aliquo infra sacros ordines constituto militem fieret, non humilitatem [sic, æqualitatem?] inter milites haberi debere, sed quasi adulteratus eques et abortivus. Huic igitur consuetudini repugnans Herwardus, pene omnes sibi servientes et obedientes a monachis milites fieri voluit, et si non aliter saltem a monacho, si quis eum serviret, gladium sicut militaris mos exigit acciperet. . . (Gesta 368)

[Hereward wanted himself and his men to be knighted in this way because he heard that it had been ruled by the French that if anyone were knighted by a monk, cleric or any ordained minister, it ought not to be reckoned the equal of true knighthood, but invalid and anachronstic. Opposing this regulation therefore Hereward wished almost all those serving him and under his rule to be knighted by monks. So if anyone wanted to serve under him he had to receive the sword in the manner the knight's tradition demands, from a monk at least, if from no one else. (Swanton 64)]

128 And if the strength of Hereward's example is not enough to convince his readers of the efficacy of knighting by a monk, Richard also provides us with a direct testimonial from the outlaw:

sæpe adjungens, “quoniam si quis a servo Dei et a milite Regis Coelestis gladium militarem acceperit, hunc servum suam virtutem excellenter in omni tirocinio agere scio, ut sæpe expertus sum.” (Gesta 368)

[Often he would point out: “I know from common experience that if anyone should receive the knightly sword from a servant of God, a knight of the kingdom of heaven, such a man will pursue valor most excellently in every kind of military service.” (Swanton 64)]

Thus, these two passages present us with a claim made for knighting by monks on the strength of both tradition and experience; and not just any experience, but the experience of a legendary military leader. By presenting Hereward's knighting thus, Richard manages not only to tie Hereward and his actions closely to the two main fenland abbeys involved in his legends, but also to assert the rights of the abbeys to a central role in this important cultural ritual from which they may have been in some danger of exclusion. We can now see a possible explanation for the awkwardness of the abortive knighting in the court of Gisberht de Ghent. Had his hero been knighted at a secular court he could not have been a spokesman for the monastic right of knighting, even as he could not be a spokesman for the sacredness of monastic possessions if he was seen as the despoiler of Peterborough. In both cases, we can see Richard reconstructing his sources so as to emphasize the role of the outlaw as a champion of monastic privilege, and of this outlaw as peculiarly one of their own.

We examined earlier the way Richard retells the events of the assault on

Peterborough, freely changing the chronology of events and the motivations of the actors from those given in the chronicle accounts to those that better suited his overall depiction of

129 the outlaw. Yet there is another significant way in which Richard altered the events in his retelling, namely by completely ignoring the role that the Danes played. As we have seen in

Hugh Candidus and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle accounts, Hereward sided with the Danes against William and encouraged them to accompany him on the assault on Peterborough; as

Hugh says, “et ipse Hereuuardus incitabat et inuitabat eos ut uenirent ad monasterium de

Burch” (Hugh 39) [and Hereward himself invited and incited them to come unto the monastery of Burgh (Mellows and Mellows 39)]. The chronicles focus heavily on the role of the Danes, following their accounts of the sacking in the chronicles by reports of William's negotiations with the Danes, and eventual success in buying them off by letting them retain the treasures they had captured on the Peterborough and other raids. In contrast to the attention the chronicles give to the Danes, Richard does not mention them at all in the Gesta.

The omission of the Danes from the Gesta is especially interesting because the stories about

Hereward are so heavily influenced by Scandinavian storytelling traditions and motifs. Both

Joost De Lange and Henry G. Leach have explored the similarities between the deeds of

Hereward recorded in the Gesta and those of various saga outlaws (De Lange 3-32; Leach

342-350). Likewise, Timothy Jones devotes a chapter of his dissertation to the relationship between the Gesta's depiction of Hereward's youth and the youthful adventures of saga heroes (Jones, Ch. 3). However, despite the unarguable Scandinavian influence on the stories in the Gesta. the only explicitly Scandinavian character to appear in the work is the bear that Hereward kills in Gisberht's court. This bear, which appears as the first trial of strength for Hereward during his exile, is of interest beyond serving as a foil to set off the

130 hero's worthiness for the honor of knighthood. This is no ordinary bear, and it comes with some history of its own:

quern inclyti ursi Norweyæ fuisse filium, ac formatum secundum pedes illius et caput ad fabulam Danorum affirmabant sensum humanum habentem, et loquelam hominis intelligentem ac doctum ad bellum; ejus igitur pater in silvis fertur pueilam rapuisse, et ex ea Biemum regem Norweyæ genuisse. . . (Gesta 343)

[This was the offspring of a famous Norwegian bear and had the head and feet of a man and human intelligence, and understood the speech of men and was cunning in battle, so the story of the Danes asserts. Its father was said to have raped a girl in the woods and through her to have engendered Beom, King of Norway.

There are, of course, numerous stories of bear-men in both literature and folklore. Such stories have been of particular interest to medievalists because of their possible connections to B e o w u l f18 The voluminous critical discussion of the “Bear's Son Tales” (AT 301) demonstrates the widespread interest and appeal of these stories. Yet there is no surviving story of a “famous bear” that fathered a Norwegian king. The closest we can come, perhaps, is a story, like this one parenthetically inserted into an account of the life of another eleventh century Englishman in the Danelaw, Waltheof. The Vita Waldevi preserves an account of a

Danish Beom, Earl Waltheofs grandfather, who was bom from a bear:

Tradunt relationes antiquorum quod vir quidam nobilis, quem Dominus permisit, contra solitum ordinem humanæ propaginis, ex quodam albo urso patre, muliere generosa matre, procreari, Ursus genuit Spratlingum; Spratlingus Ulsium; Ulsius Beom, cognomento Beresune, hoc est filis ursi. Hie Beom Dacus fuit natione, comes egregius et miles illustris. In signum autem illius diversitatis speciei ex parte generantium, produxerat ei natura patemas auriculas, sive ursi. In aliis autem speciei matemæ assimilabatur. (Giles 5)

[Ancient traditions tell us that a certain noble man, by the permission of God and contrary to the usual manner of the human race, was begotten of a white bear as his father, a woman of good birth being his mother: Ursus begat Spratlingus, Spratlingus

18 See most recently J. Michael Stitt's book Beowulf and the Bear's Son: Epic. Saga, and Fairytale in Northern Germanic Tradition. New York: Garland, 1992.

131 Ulsius, Ulsius Beom, sumamed Beresune, that is “Bear’s son.” This Beom was a Dane by race, a distinguished nobleman and famous soldier. As a sign, however, of the difference of species on the part of those who were his progenitors, nature gave him his father’s ears or those of a bear. In other respects, however, he resembled his mother’s race. (Wright 129)]

Like Hereward’s bear, this descendent of a mixed union bears the evidence of his cross species ancestry. These two tales appear to be much closer to one another than either one is to the much later and more commonly cited bear’s tale in Hrolfs Saga Kraka. where a king’s son named Bjom is tumed into a bear by a woman whose advances he rejects. Before he is slain, Bjom fathers three children, only two of whom possess partial animal features, namely those of an elk and a dog, not a bear.

It is extremely interesting that two lives of eleventh century Englishmen should both incorporate elements from stories about Scandinavian strongmen fathered by bears.

Astonishingly, C. E. Wright, while noting in his Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England that there are many Scandinavian elements in both the Gesta Herewardi and the Vita

Waldevi. overlooks the bear’s son reference in the Hereward story and in reference to the bear story in the life of Waltheof points us to Hrolfs Saga Kraka a g a i n . Since the oral accounts of such bear-men have not been preserved for us, it is difficult to guess what

Richard’s intent was in including this reference to them. Nevertheless, it is clear that the bear in the Gesta is Scandinavian and linked to a Scandinavian royal line. Thus, Richard would appear to have eliminated all references to the Scandinavian king. King Sweyn, whose claims on the English throne Hereward supported, and inserted the story of a Scandinavian

19 Fr. Klaeber, on the other hand, was typically thorough - see Beowulf, xix n.3, where he cites both the Gesta and the Vita Waldevi as examples of the bear motif.

132 bear connected to the Norwegian royal house. He then has his hero slay this bear in the

midst of its attack on the court.

The slaying of the Scandinavian bear at the beginning of Hereward's career opens

some interesting possibilities. It may be that Richard was trying to distance his hero from

the abortive Scandinavian attempt on the English throne by having Hereward defend

Gisberht's court from this maurauding bear. Although during the political uncertainties of

1070 the Danish claim to the English throne, backed by an army already on English soil, may

well have seemed likely to succeed, from the hindsight of 1135, when the Normans were

firmly entrenched, Hereward's backing of King Sweyn might well have looked like an ill-

considered move. For a hero consistently depicted in the Gesta as a brilliant military

strategist, an alliance with the poorly executed Danish invasion could have been seen as a

blot on his reputation. It is also perhaps relevant that Richard, who was probably Norman

himself, would not have felt the ties to the Scandinavian claimant that Danelaw natives

would have. By 1135 William had long ago ceased to be an intruder on the throne, and was

now a deceased king. Active engagement on behalf of a party explicitly seeking to

overthrow King William may have seemed quite revolutionary. Hobsbawm has said that

social bandits “are reformers, not revolutionaries” (Hobsbawm 26), and this is true of

Hereward as Richard depicts him in the Gesta where Hereward's enemies are Turold and Ivo de Taillebois, not King William. By removing the Danes from the story, together with making the attack on Peterborough an attack on Turold instead, Richard makes Hereward's concerns purely local and removes any connections to rival royal claimants.

133 Rather than being hostile to King William, the Gesta's depictions of William are

quite sympathetic. William's relations with Hereward, when at last they meet, are cordial, and even when William is besieging Hereward at Ely he shows a grudging admiration for the

outlaw. Twice he decides that the outlaw's complaints are just and resolves to settle with

him, only to be dissuaded from this peaceable course by evil counselors such as Ivo de

Taillebois. Since the Gesta is not hostile to William himself, but rather to certain local lords who abuse their power, it may be that Richard wanted to downplay his hero's connections with the rival Danish claimants to the throne. This perhaps makes the reasons for the Gesta's emphasis on the royal connections of the bear more clear, and provides another reason why

Richard would not have wanted to drop the story despite the awkwardness it introduced about the status of Hereward's knighthood. In defending the court of Gisberht from this menace Hereward joins the company of Kings Alfred, Harold, and even William who successfully countered Scandinavian marauders.

The Gesta Herewardi is a political work, but it is a work about local politics, not the national issues of English versus Norman rights to England. Because scholars have been satisfied to consider it a pastiche assembled for partisan and even nationalistic reasons, the complications that a careful reading of the work bring to light have been overlooked. By observing instead how the Gesta fits into its local and manuscript contexts, we can see that it makes a bold attempt to draw stories from popular oral tradition into the literary life of the fenland monastic communities. In doing so it lays claim to a figure of local cultural importance, and, no doubt, political significance, in order to give local legitimacy to the claims of the abbey.

134 Richard remodels his stories in ways that are frequently clumsy and occasionally infuriating to a modem reader, but we can nevertheless detect a guiding purpose and an author who, although he struggled with his sources, did not in the end lose control over them.

Indeed, when we understand it within its context, and approach it with an appreciation for the challenges its author faced and the purposes that drove his composition, the Gesta begins to lose its appearance of being “arbitrarily thrown together” and repays the effort to see it as a serious and self-consistent work. Additionally, the Gesta presents us with the rare opportunity of seeing local heroic legend treated by a monastic author and his readers with the same kind of seriousness that was given to saint's legends. The extent to which monks of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries participated in the local folk culture and life of the people around them must have varied greatly from place to place and over time. But the

Gesta demonstrates that the monks of the fenlands, at least, were participants in that culture despite institutional and linguistic barriers that might have isolated them. More than just being participants in the local culture, though, the fenland monks took a local hero and embraced him as a representative for their own concerns and struggles over preserving their rights and their property. In doing so, they were embracing what we have seen to be a traditional theme within English outlaw-hero narrative and emphasizing it for their own purposes.

135 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allen, Barbara. “Personal Experience Narratives: Use and Meaning in Interaction.” In Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: A Reader, pp. 236-243. Elliott Oring, ed. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1989.

Davis, H. W. C. England under the Normans and Angevins 1066-1272. 13th gd. London: Methuen, 1949.

Gautier, Léon. “The Admission to Chivarly.” In Chivalrv. Chapter 5. Jacques Levron, ed. D. C. Dunning, trans. London: Phoenix House, 1965.

Gesta Herewardi. In GefFrei Gaimar. Lestorie Des Engles. Thomas D. Hardy & Charles T. Martin, eds. Rolls Series vol. 91: I. Kraus Reprints, 1966.

Giles, J. A. Vita Guorundum Anglo-Saxonum: Original Lives of Anglo-Saxons and Others Who Lived Before the Conquest. 1854. New York: Burt Franklin, 1967.

Head, Victor. Hereward. Allan Sutton, 1995.

Hobsbawm, Eric. Bandits. Revised Edition. New York: Pantheon Books, 1981.

Hugh Candidus. The Chronicle of Hugh Candidus: A Monk of Peterborough. William T. Mellows, ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1949.

Jones, Timothy. “Redemptive Fictions: The Contexts of Outlawry in Medieval English Chronicle and Romance.” Diss. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1994.

Keen, Maurice. The Outlaws of Medieval Legend, second edition. New York: Dorset Press, 1987.

Klaeber, Fr. Beowulf. Boston: D. C. Heath, 1941.

Knowles, Dom David, C. N. L. Brooke, and Vera C. M. London. The Heads of Religious Houses England and Wales 940-1216. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1972.

136 Lange, Joost De, The Relation and Development of English and Icelandic Outlaw-Traditions. Haarlem: H.D. Tjeenk Willink & Zoon N.V., 1935.

Leach, Henry Goddard. Angevin Britain and Scandinavia. Cambridge: Harvard U. P., 1921.

Liber Eliensis. Blake, E. O., ed. Camden Third Series, Vol. 92. London: Royal Historical Society, 1962.

Liebermann, Felix. “Über ostenglische Geschichtsquellen des 12., 13., 14. Jahrhunderts, besonders den falschen Ingulf.” Neues Archiv der Gessellschaft fur altere deutsche Geschichte. pp. 225-267. Vol. 18. Hannover und Leipzig, 1893.

Mellows, Charles, and William T. Mellows, trans. The Peterborough Chronicle of Hugh Candidus. William T. Mellows, ed. Peterborough: The Peterborough Natural History, Scientific, and Archaeological Society, 1941.

Michel, Francisque. Chroniques Anglo-Normandes. Vol. 2. Rouen, 1836.

Stenton, Frank M. Anglo-Saxon England. Third Edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.

Stitt, J. Michael. Beowulf and the Bear's Son : Enic. Saga, and Fairytale in Northern Germanic Tradition. New York: Garland Pub., 1992.

Swanton, Michael, trans. Three Lives of the Last Englishmen. New York: Garland Publishing, 1984.

Wilson, R. M. The Lost Literature of Medieval England. 2nd ed. London: Methuen, 1970.

Wright, C. E. The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1939.

137 CHAPTER4

HEREWARD BEYOND THE GESTA

While the Gesta Herewardi is the primary source of Hereward legendry both for the

Middle Ages and for us, it is not the only source. Hereward legends that do not derive from the Gesta appear in Geoffrey Gaimar’s Lestoire des Engles, in the Liber Eliensis. and in the

Book of Hyde. In most of these cases the Gesta was a major source for the author’s account of Hereward, but other legends were also added. The compiler of the Liber Eliensis tells us that a monk named Richard wrote a work on Hereward from which he drew some of his information about the outlaw (this is the early version of the Gesta. as discussed above in

Chapter 3), but he is alone in informing us of his sources, and even he does not elaborate on where he got the stories which are not based on the Gesta. The rest do not reveal where their material came from, and apart from the Gesta. we do not know what other sources they may have used.

Since Richard had scoured the area for written sources and incorporated everything he could find in the Gesta, it is probable that the additional tales these authors tell came out of oral tradition. This does not mean, however, that it is possible to reconstruct with confidence what the popular tales of Hereward might have been like, for despite the popular origins of their stories, all of these authors actively shaped their Hereward narratives to fit

138 the expectations of their own literate audiences. Eric Hobsbawm has observed in regard to

bandits, that “the heroes of remote times survive because they are not only the heroes of the

peasants” (Hobsbawm 129, italics in original). Certainly this is true of Hereward, who must

have been a

hero of what Hobsbawm would call the peasants, but who survived because he was actively

promoted by the monastic foundations in his region. The most influential version of his

stories, although based on popular tales, is as we have seen constructed so as to appeal to a

monastic audience and their concerns.

What is interesting in the collection of materials I will be examining in this chapter,

those that have been considered not to be based on the Gesta. is the diverse ends to which the

Hereward stories could be readily tumed. In the hands of these authors, the Hereward

legends are made to reflect a startling variety of images of the outlaw. In one, Hereward

becomes a hero of biblical stature, and is made to resemble Judas Maccabeus, the defender

of Jerusalem, the temple, and the Jewish faith. In another, the outlaw is shorn of the

religious trappings so often associated with him in the monastic chronicles, and he becomes a chivalric warrior hero of a type not too dissimilar from those we find in the romances. And

in the only hostile account of the outlaw that has survived, stories about Hereward are told that paint him as a treacherous and cunning, base-born criminal. Such diversity of tone and theme in these Hereward legends speaks of the vitality of the popular traditions about him.

The largest collection of Hereward legends, apart from the Gesta. appears in the

Liber Eliensis. although this work concerns itself with Hereward only in regard to the siege

of Ely. The compiler of the Liber Eliensis seems to have drawn from at least three different sources for his account of William’s siege of the island (Liber Eliensis Iv). Book II of the

139 Liber Eliensis. in which the Hereward legends appear, was probably written sometime before

II54, and probably not earlier than 1150 (Liber Eliensis xlviii and n.7). By the time the

Hereward account in Book II was compiled, Richard, the author of the Gesta. was already dead, for Richard is referred to there as “beate memorie” [of blessed memory] (see Chapter 2 above). One of the sources from which the Ely compiler drew was the early version of this

Richard’s Gesta. and his narrative in the chapters based on the Gesta (Chapters 104-107) does not stray too far from that work as we have it. Of more immediate interest is the first of the chapters to deal with Hereward, Chapter 102, for it seems to have come from a source independent of the Gesta. Blake suggests that it may have “existed as a separate oposculum later incorporated as a whole by the compiler of the Liber Eliensis” (Iv), a judgment based on the consistent way that the chapter patterns its story after the second-century B. C.

Maccabean rebellion.

The oposculum, as represented in the Liber Eliensis. demonstrates that Richard was by no means the only monk interested in writing an account of the outlaw Hereward and casting him in the role of hero to the ecclesiastical institutions. And in finding a model for his work in the actions of Judas Maccabeus, the oposculum author achieved his end much more concisely and skillfully than Richard did in the Gesta Herewardi. The oposculum is more tightly controlled and carefully worked-up than the Gesta. but as we shall see its scope is not so large, and it ultimately makes a less stirring tale than the Gesta. We do not know when it was first written, but since only somewhere between nineteen and forty-five years separated the writing of the Gesta and the compilation of Book II of the Liber Eliensis. it must have been composed sometime near to the composition of the Gesta. Given its presence in the Liber Eliensis. it also seems probable that it was composed at Ely. Since we

140 know from Richard’s own report, and the evidence of his finished work, that he avidly

sought out all the Hereward material he could and dutifully worked it into his finished piece,

it seems improbable that it could have existed in Ely before the writing of the Gesta without

Richard having known of it. And had he known of it, is is even less likely that he would not

have used it, since, as we shall see, it is so close in spirit to his own work. It therefore seems

most probable that the oposculum was written sometime between 1131 and 1150 (or

thereabouts). Whether the author of the oposculum had read the Gesta is difficult to say, for

he deals only with the siege of Ely, and does not follow Hereward either to Peterborough or to the forests of Brunewald. Neither does the work particularly echo the siege portions of the

Gesta. so that there is no direct evidence of borrowing. It is quite likely that the author may have based his entire narrative on oral accounts of the siege and, given the tone and biblical allusions, his sources reflect an ecclesiastical culture in ways that the Gesta never does. The oposculum may reflect, then, the monks’ stories of the siege that they told among themselves, and in that way reflect the folk culture of the monastery itself.

While Richard struggled to find a way to present an outlaw as a monastic hero in the

Gesta. the author of the oposculum was more successful in finding a biblical analogue. In the books of the Maccabees, and particularly in the person of Judas Maccabeus, he found a hero who had struggled successfully against a king, and fought fiercely for old, established cultural behaviors and beliefs, and against new ones imposed by a conqueror. By invoking this celebrated biblical character as a model for understanding an eleventh century English outlaw, the monk was doing more than just using a familiar text to illuminate a less familiar legend.20 We have already seen that orally circulating legends of Hereward were popular

20 It need hardly be said that the allusive uses the author makes of the books of the 141 around Ely and the surrounding neighborhood at this time. By inserting quotations from

Maccabees into his story of Hereward's resistance to William’s siege, he was demonstrating the correspondence between the two events, and putting the most exalted literary tradition available to him at the service of the oral tradition he was recording. He was also staking out political ground and drawing up sides. By casting Hereward as Judas Maccabeus, he also cast King William as King Antiochus of Syria, a foreign king bent on destroying the Jewish temple and religion. The outlaw thereby becomes a de facto champion of the religious life against threatening external forces of disruption and change represented by the king. In choosing Judas Maccabeus as a paragon for his hero, he chose a secular martial leader who had cleansed the temple from its defilement, and reestablished the traditional order of worship that threatened to be lost under the dominance of a foreign invader. The echoes that this sets up, when Hereward is depicted as defending the monastery of Ely, are very powerful, and very political, in ways that the Gesta never is.

King William in the Gesta is the well-meaning king led astray by sinister advisers so familiar from medieval romances and ballads. When a policy that is harmful to the abbeys is proposed in the Gesta. it comes from some Norman lord, and not from William. In contrast, in the oposculum it is William himself who “cogitauit malum adversus locum sanctum et disperdere eum” (Tiber Eliensis 174) [contemplated evil towards the holy place—even to destroy it]. The lords who usually play the part of the Norman evil-doer in the Hereward narratives, William or Frederick of Warenne, Abbot Turold, or Ivo Taillebois, make no appearance at all, and King William is in direct charge of his army, and is directly

Maccabees supposes an audience deeply familiar with Latin biblical texts - in short, as with the Gesta. a monastic audience.

142 responsible for all that is done. In the Gesta he is inclined toward mercy and settling amicably with the outlaws, while in the oposculum, “quoscumque comprehendere poterant oculos eruebant, manus ac pedes truncabant” 175) [whomever they were able to capture they dug their eyes out and mutilated their hands and feet]. In short, the opoculum is much more partisan than the Gesta ever is. But although it is openly anti-William, the oposculum, like the Gesta. is not ultimately about who is sitting on the throne, but about who is controlling the local lands.

It is impossible to say how the oposculum originally began or ended since it was no doubt modified and possibly shortened by the compiler of the Liber Eliensis. The compiler was plainly confused about the sequence of events surrounding the siege, and Blake suggests that he attempted to make the three accounts he possessed of it into a sequence of three assaults against the island. In order to do this he may well have cut off the end of the oposculum that depicted the fall of Ely so as to make it blend more smoothly into the accounts that followed. The oposculum as we have it begins with a quick summary of the flight of Earl Morcar, Bishop Ægelwine, and Si ward Bam to Ely. There they joined with

Hereward, “fortissimum bellatorem” (Tiber Eliensis 173) [that most valiant warrior], and from there until the end of the account we are told of the struggle of Hereward's courage and fortitude against William’s might. This struggle is cast, as with the Gesta. as a struggle over land. The oposculum opens with the rebels using the very land itself, in the form of cut-up sod, to construct a fortification to aid in the repulsing of the invaders. The entire account is cast in the context of the topography and history of the island itself: “eo... locus ille ex sui natura munitissimus in medio terre et inexpungnabilis consistit, sepe enim regnum fatigavit

143 et nunc novo régi multas ferebat insidias” (Liber Eliensis 174) [that place on account of its

natural disposition was the most fortified in the middle of the land and it stood impregnable,

for it often harassed the kingdom and now was bringing many insurrections against the new

king]. This not only suggests that the author was an Ely monk, but also demonstrates that the

use of Hereward as a symbol for the fenland abbeys’ fights over land was not limited to

Richard and Robert of Swaffham (see Chapter 2 above). The oposculum ends with a

description of William’s dividing among his soldiers the “bona ac predia ecclesie” (Liber

Eliensis 176) [properties and estates of the church] that lay outside of the fens. We know

from other sources that it was probably this move on his part that precipitated the fall of Ely,

but the oposculum as we have it ends here, and so we never actually see that event.

Although the drama of the account is provided by Hereward’s successful battles

against William’s seemingly-overwhelming army, the outlaw is an exemplar throughout of

the faith and spirit that the author is celebrating. This is made clear when the author puts

into Hereward’s mouth a speech that is a pastiche of quotes from the Maccabees themselves

“Nunc fratres emulate libertatem partie et date animas vestras pro testamento patrum, quoniam abiectio et opprobium facti sumus omnibus vicinis regnis et regionibus et melius est nobis mori in bello quam videre mala gentis et sanctorum nostrorum.” (Liber Eliensis 174)

[Now brothers emulate the freedom of our native land and give your lives for the covenant of our fathers, because we have become an object of dishonor and reproach to all the neighboring kingdoms and districts, and better it is for us to die in battle than to see the evils of our nation and our holy things.]

This speech, as Blake points out in his notes, is assembled from statements made by the

Maccabees in I Mac. 2:50 and I Mac. 3:59. Nevertheless, phrases like “covenant of our fathers” make little sense in their context in the Liber Eliensis on anything but a symbolic

level as a call to preserve tradition. But here, as with Richard’s account of the outlaw in the

144 Gesta. historical plausibility must give way before the moral purpose of this work, which is to celebrate the spirit of fierce and active resistance to encroachments on the traditional rights and property of the abbey, as represented by the outlaw Hereward.

Even as Richard emphasized the shared goals of the outlaw and the fenland monasteries by having him and his men knighted by their representatives, so the author of the oposculum links the outlaw with the abbey at Ely through a symbolic ritual. In Chapter

102, we are told that new recruits to the band of outlaws had to take an oath that bound them not only to the outlaw band, but also to the founder of the abbey, St. Æthelthryth: “neque aliquem in suo contubemio admittebant, nisi prius fidelitatem supra corpus sacratissime virginis Ætheldrethe iureiurando animis et viribus secum agere sponderent” fLiber Eliensis

176) [they did not admit any into their military companionship, unless they first, by pledging loyalty over the body of the most holy virgin Æthelthryth, vowed to conduct themselves with courage and manliness]. Susan Ridyard has illuminated the relationship of the monks of Ely to their lands, and how their sense of mission was intricately tied up with the history of the abbey as founded by Æthelthryth and her proprietorship of its property. The monks, she demonstrates, saw themselves as the guardians of the saint’s lands, and any usurpation of those lands as an infringement on her rights: “It meant that, just as the church and the lands of Ely became the church and lands of the saint, so the monks of Ely became significant only as members of an undying community whose function was to serve the saint” (Ridyard 192).

The vows of loyalty over the saint would have placed the outlaws in the same role that the monks had seen themselves fulfilling for centuries. This relationship to the saint only adds to the sense of the holy nature, imparted by the modelling of the account on the Maccabeean

145 rebellion, of the outlaws’ fight with William. Such uses of a saint’s relics, and of biblical language and models, tells us clearly that at least some of the monks saw Hereward’s uprising as a kind of holy rebellion, with which they were entirely in sympathy.

That King William did not entirely lack sympathy at Ely is manifest in the third version of the siege recorded in the Liber Eliensis. the one in which we finally see the fall of

Ely. This account (in Chapters 109-111) is told from the Norman point of view (Liber

Eliensis Iv), and like the oposculum in Chapter 102 seems to be independent of the Gesta.

On the whole, it takes little notice of Hereward and places both Earls Morcar and Edwin on the island of Ely when William is about to lay siege to it. Hereward would seem to have already departed the island, for it says, “Commune délibérant, non minus, quam si princeps et dux eorum Herewardus adesset, parati obsistere” (192) [Taking counsel together they prepared to resist not at all less than if Hereward, their leader and general, should have been present]. It is interesting to see that even in this account, which is based on a version sympathetic to the Normans, Hereward is still exalted as the leader and general over such notables as the earls Morcar and Edwin.

The presence of Edwin here is certainly unhistorical. Edwin seems to play the role that Morcar plays in the other chronicles, being captured by William, while Morcar is cast in the role of Hereward and escapes with a few men. During William’s final assault on the island this version lauds the king for his courage and steadfasmess in the face of the seemingly insuperable natural obstacles presented by the surrounding fen. It contains, in fact, what claims to be an account of the horrors of the fens gleaned from the Norman soldiers themselves:

Deterruit plures per solum palustre armatos incedere, quod vix hominis aut cuiusque animalis vestigia sustineret, ac facile concussum de longe ad iactum sagitte velud 146 caos in soiidum titubans voraginem minare cemeres, ac brevissimo imbre resolutum rivis et amnibus influunt, iugiter periculosis giadioletis sunt velate, que solum palustre fovere sclent. Coniectari potest ex his quam voraginosa sint earum ima, quasi in abissum précipita. Tactum vero serenitate aiiquantula, fissuris aperitur amplis atque profundis.... Comperta sunt nobis que recitamus eorum, qui toleraverant eadem, fideli memoratu. (Liber Eliensis 190-91)

[It was a discouragement to many soldiers to march across the lonely marsh, which would hardly bear a man or even an animal, when you might easily be struck by arrows fired from far off, or see the gulf threatening [to swallow you] as you stumbled, like chaos opening in the solid earth, and the briefest of rains, too, would make rivers and streams rise and join together in an instant, forming great pools hidden by dangerous reedbeds that normally grow only in swamps. One can imagine from this what profound depths they cover, straight down almost to the Abyss. On the other hand, being touched by a little fair weather, great deep fissures would suddenly appear in the ground.... We are reciting those things that have been well authenticated for us by the faithful reminiscences of those who have endured them.]

This view of the fenlands as a treacherous place of emptiness (abysses and fissures) and dangers is in sharp contrast to the depiction of life there painted in the Gesta. There a

Norman soldier who had been captured, shown around, and released by Hereward reports back to William that despite the pressures of the siege,

arator manum ab aratro non avertat, nec messoris dextra a messe vacillet, nec venator ibi venabula non observet, nec auceps avibus insidiare juxta ripas fluminum non désistât et in silvis, quae decorae nimis in eadem insula et opulentae pene omnibus animantibus sunt. . . . Quotidie enim dum illuc tempus exegi, more Angligenorum epulis in refectorio monachorum fastidiebamus. fGesta 380-1)

the ploughman doesn’t take his hand from the plough, nor does the right hand of the reaper hesitate in reaping; the hunter doesn’t neglect his hunting spears, nor does the fowler stop lying in wait for birds by the banks of rivers and in woods, so those in the Isle are well and plentifully supplied with almost all living things. . . . Indeed every day during the time I spent there we made ourselves sick with the sumptuous English-style feasts in the monks’ refectory. (Swanton 72)

This idyllic description of life in the fens almost breaks into poetry, as the author waxes lyrical on the bounties to be found there. The fenland inhabitants, cut off by the siege from the rest of the country, appear in this description to be completely self-sufficient. In fact the

147 description of the feasts as “English-style,” emphasizes the rebels’ independence from the

Norman rulers and the self-sufficiency of their traditional customs. Written after several decades of Norman rule had passed, this account of fenland luxury emphasizes its

Englishness, and hence its basis in local tradition. Although this speech is put into the mouth of a Norman knight, it is a message from the rebels about how well their society functions when left to itself, and is meant to discourage William by demonstrating the physical and social independence of the region. That outsiders such as the Normans were not accustomed to thinking of the fenlands as a region rich in the necessities of life is evident in the astonishment and scepticism with which this knight’s description is met in William’s court.

It is also apparent in the contrast in these two depictions of the fens, the one claiming to be taken from the accounts of Norman soldiers, and the other a fictionalized account put into the mouth of such a soldier by an Ely monk. Such a contrast emphasizes the degree to which this Liber Eliensis account describes the events from the point of view of the Norman soldiery.

Likewise, the depictions of William himself are a sharp contrast to those in the oposculum only seven chapters earlier. While as we have seen the king is sharply criticized in the oposculum, in the Norman-sympathetic account the king is compared to

“prestantissimius dux lulius Cesar” fLiber Eliensis 191) [the outstanding general Julius

Caesar] and the author laments that “Scriptor Thebaidos vel Eneidos” [the writer of the

Thebaid or Aeneid] was not present to fittingly sing the praises of this king’s endeavors, for if these deeds had been fittingly presented in that style, then “inter divos... transferrent eum” fLiber Eliensis 193) [they would have placed him among the gods]. Such enthusiasm for

William is lacking in other fenland versions of the siege, even those like the Gesta that avoid

148 blaming him directly for Norman excesses. This embrace of William does indicate that the points of view on these events were more heterogenous than might otherwise be supposed from the existing documents, even within the fenland monasteries. But while William is made a hero, Hereward is not made a villain, but, as we have seen, is still exalted in his abilities as a leader and general. Perhaps the substitution of Morcar and Edwin for Hereward and Morcar, respectively, was meant to remove the discomforting fact that Hereward and

William were in direct conflict at Ely, and thereby reduce the difficulties otherwise inherent in writing a version praising William’s generalship without denigrating the generalship of his opponent, the culture-hero Hereward.

In all the Liber Eliensis accounts, even the one most sympathetic to the Normans,

Hereward is depicted favorably and heroically. His heroism is a martial heroism, but is manifest in his actions in support of the abbey and, especially in the oposculum, is tempered by a sense of holy mission. In the other major source of Hereward legendry, Geoffrey

Gaimar’s Lestoire des Eneles. the martial elements of the legends are celebrated without being turned to serve a monastic ethos.

Geoffrey Gaimar’s History is generally considered to be independent from the Gesta.

Hardy and Martin, editors of both Gaimar and the Gesta. in their preface to their Rolls Series translation of Gaimar’s History, remark that while the Gesta Herewardi served as “the source from which nearly all subsequent writers have derived their information,” Gaimar’s accounts of Hereward are “quite independent of the Gesta” (xxxiv). This position is reinforced by

Joost De Lange, who remarks that, “it is plain that Gaimar did not know Richard’s work and that he may be considered as an independent source” (6). For the purposes of understanding how near contemporary and subsequent generations of medieval storytellers constructed

149 stories about this outlaw-hero, and to what ends his stories were turned, Gaimar’s History

would seem to be an important and promising source.

Internal evidence indicates that Geoffrey Gaimar was writing his History in the mid

to late 1130’s (Short 336-339), which is only shortly after Richard wrote the Gesta (c. 1109-

31). Another editor of Gaimar, Alexander Bell, remarks that “Apart from Hereward’s attack

on Peterborough, related in A.S.C.(E) 1070 and in Hugh Candidus, and a few mentions in

Domesday Book Gaimar’s account of Hereward seems to be the earliest which has survived;

only the Gesta Herewardi could dispute this claim and the two texts are quite independent”

(269 n. 11.5457-704). Certainly the texts are markedly different. While Richard wrote the

Gesta in Latin prose, Gaimar wrote his History in Anglo-Norman verse. As this would

indicate, their intended audiences were very different; Richard wrote for the bishop and the

monastic communities in the fenlands, while Gaimar wrote for wealthy, secular patrons, and

is considered a courtly, rather than an ecclesiastical, writer (Bell x-xi). Like Richard,

however, Gaimar was living in the fenlands area, specifically in Lincolnshire. And like

Richard he seems to have relied upon a combination of written and oral sources for his

stories. In regard to Gaimar’s sources. Bell remarks further in a note:

A careful examination of his account [of Hereward], too long to give here, persuades me that we can distinguish three types of material in his sources. The first is matter- of-fact in tone, is regarded by the author as history, and may be based on written materials: this includes the meeting with the notables, the attack on Peterborough, and the Continental campaign. The second suggests oral tradition: this includes the flight from Ely and the fight in the Bruneswald. The third is literary reworking and elaboration of traditional material: this comprises the final scenes. (269 n. 11.5457- 704)

Bell’s division of Gaimar’s sources into three is, I believe, largely correct in structure, if deficient in the details. A reexamination here of Gaimar’s Hereward stories, in light of what

150 I have demonstrated in regard to Richard’s reconstructions of traditional material in the

Gesta. will enable us to make more specific identifications of those sources. Mainly it is the presumption of independence of Gaimar’s History from the Gesta that I wish to challenge here. The reexamination of the Gesta in the preceding chapters, demonstrating the extent to which Richard modified the local legends he presented and the ways that he did so, provides a background against which we can more clearly detect borrowing on Gaimar’s part from the

Gesta. If Gaimar did use the Gesta. then it would have important implications first of all for the dating of the Gesta. Liebermann’s claim of a composition date around II50 would be impossibly late, and a date before the early 1130’s, during the episcopacy of Bishop Hervey, would be all but confirmed. Additionally, a relationship between the Ely/Peterborough

Gesta and Gaimar’s history would have important implications for the debate about Gaimar’s sources, in particular the doubt surrounding the origin of his copy of the Anglo-Saxon

Chronicle.21 If, indeed, he did use the Gesta. that would establish a Peterborough link for him that would add some weight to the claims that his copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle likewise came from there.

Gaimar’s account of Hereward begins with the siege of Ely, paying no attention to the outlaw’s early life. For Hardy and Martin, Gaimar’s silence about Hereward’s early life means that the historian “knows nothing of Hereward till the revolt of Ely, nothing of his parentage, nothing of his first wife, Turfrida,” all of which demonstrates for them that

Gaimar was unfamiliar with the Gesta (xxxiv). Gaimar’s silence on the outlaw’s early life, though, would not be too surprising even had he known the Gesta. Hereward is, after all, a

21 For a recent overview of this controversy, and an argument for a York, rather than Peterborough, Chronicle see Ian Short's recent article on Gaimar's epilogue (327-336).

151 figure of only minor national importance, and Gaimar, who is writing a national history, can therefore follow the lead of the major chronicles, such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in ignoring Hereward’s early history. Instead, he quite naturally chooses to introduce Hereward only as he comes to national attention as the leader of an uprising. The passing over of

Hereward’s early history, then, is no evidence that Gaimar did not make use of the Gesta. as

Hardy and Martin appear to argue.

Once Hereward does enter Gaimar’s narrative the historian seems fascinated by the outlaw. Bell remarks that the “one event in the reign of William I which seems to have aroused Gaimar’s interest [is] the deeds and death of Hereward” (269 n. 11.5457-704). And what most moves Gaimar about Hereward’s story is the courageous and valiant defiance of overwhelming odds. Aside from Hereward’s story, Gaimar’s narration of William’s reign presents him swiftly and ruthlessly crushing one uprising after another. There is little detail provided about these uprisings as Gaimar hurries on from one rebellion to the next. In the midst of this sequence of uprisings against the king, Gaimar lingers a moment over Bishop

Æthelwine, Si ward Bam, and Earl Morkere, names that he likely derived from the Anglo-

Saxon Chronicle, for there they are also listed prominently among the leaders at Ely. These three then joined with “the English,” a group that Gaimar repeatedly characterizes as

“Vdlaghes” [outlaws]. Gaimar’s characterization of these rebels as outlaws is unique to the uprising at Ely, and the word does not appear in his descriptions of other insurrections or their participants. Hereward is immediately introduced as the lord of the outlaws, and is described as “Un des meillurs del region” [One of the best of the country] (11. 5470). His history and current position are swiftly summarized in two lines: “Normans lourent deserite.

152 / Ore sunt a lui tuz asembie” [Normans had disinherited him. / Now all were gathered with him] (11. 5471-2). All of this seems likely to have derived from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. for like that work, Gaimar suggests that Hereward and his outlaw band were already active in the fenlands when Morcar, Siward Bam, and Æthelwine joined him. He does not seem to follow this source for long, however.

When William comes against Hereward and his allies at Ely, the king, as in previous insurrections, exerts his seemingly unstoppable power and seizes the rebel-held island of Ely.

But this event is different from those which surround it in the Historv. for in this instance a principal rebel escapes. Hereward’s successful escape from Ely draws Gaimar into his first detailed description of the outlaw’s actions. Gaimar’s account of the outlaw’s flight from

Ely in a fisherman’s boat appears to be independent of any written source we have, and Bell is most likely correct in his assertion that it came from oral tradition. It is a classic escape tale, where the outlaw in disguise is able to elude his enemies. The outlaws are depicted as cunning, ruthless (they take every opportunity to slay their unsuspecting enemies), and locally popular. This last is emphasized when Hereward sets out from Ely with only seven men and by daylight the next day has seven hundred who have collected around him in

Bruneswald, drawn by his reputation and local popularity (11. 5502-3, 5552-3).

It is the events that come next, though, that are of particular interest because of their possible relationship to the Gesta. We have already seen how Richard altered both local traditions and historical fact in moving the sack of Peterborough to after the fall of Ely. It is telling, then, that Gaimar likewise places the attack on Peterborough after the outlaw’s flight from Ely. The significance of this has so far been completely overlooked. His other known

153 source, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, correctly places the sack of Peterborough before

William’s siege of Ely and the escape of Hereward. Gaimar, then, would seem to be following a different source for this portion of his Hereward account than the Chronicle version he had been using, and this work, I suggest, was the Gesta.

After dwelling on the skill with which Hereward eluded his Norman pursuers and humiliated them by overcoming a superior force and stealing off with their horses, Gaimar reports that Hereward and his by then very large band of outlaws turned toward

Peterborough: “Vne cite vnt asaillie, / Burg asaillirent cil forsfait” [They assaulted a city /

They assaulted Peterborough which had betrayed him] (11. 5556-7). What Gaimar could have meant by Peterborough’s betrayal of Hereward is unclear from his text. He has told us nothing about Hereward’s relations with Peterborough. In fact, this observation follows his report of how Hereward was betrayed at the end of the siege by Ely, not Peterborough.

Either Gaimar has made the unlikely mistake of confusing Peterborough with Ely, or he is alluding to a story which he is not relating. In the latter, more likely, event the Gesta fits perfectly as the model story. We have already observed how the local chronicle accounts depict Hereward’s assault on Peterborough as being motivated by a desire to protect the monastery’s possessions from Norman despoilers, and how the Gesta. uniquely, depicts his assault as being motivated by the treachery and maliciousness of Turold, abbot of

Peterborough. The Gesta alone, then, provides a background story that explains Gaimar’s curious statement.

The motivation and timing of the event are not the only things in Gaimar’s account of the sack of Peterborough that seem to derive from the Gesta. We have seen already that the chronicles tell of the raiding outlaws and Danes departing by boat back to Ely, and that in

154 contrast, the Gesta alone omits all reference to the Danish presence, and gives us an account

of the outlaws wandering lost in the woods until the miraculous wolf and lights come to

guide them on to Stamford. Like the Gesta. Gaimar also removes the Danes from the events

surrounding the sack of Peterborough. Although he does not display any reticence in

reporting the Danish involvement in the uprising at York, Gaimar, like Richard, ignores their presence on Ely and on the Peterborough raid. It is also telling that Gaimar reports that

Hereward and his men proceeded directly from the sack of Peterborough on to Stamford.

Although Gaimar says nothing of the miracles that the Gesta reports, in having Hereward and his men go from Peterborough to Stamford he is again making a narrative turn for which the only extant model is the Gesta. Ultimately, the very elements that make Richard’s account of the fall of Ely and the sack of Peterborough so unique — the motivation, the timing, and the actions of the outlaws after the attack, are either present or hinted at in Gaimar’s account.

All this makes Gaimar’s independence from the Gesta seem unlikely.

Gaimar’s account of Hereward’s activities after the attack on Peterborough is less striking in its resemblence to the Gesta: nevertheless, its general outlines seem to derive from that source. Once Hereward successfully eludes William’s men surrounding Ely, the chronicles lose sight of him. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle from Peterborough takes parting notice of Hereward by remarking that upon King William’s entering Ely, the outlaws surrendered to him, “l)aet waes Egelwine Biscop 7 Morkere eorl. 7 ealle J)a t>e mid heom

waeron buton Herewarde ane. 7 ealle l>a f>e mid him woldon. 7 he hi ahtlice ut lædde”

[namely Bishop Æthelwine and Earl Morcar and all those who were with them, except

Hereward alone and all those who wished to follow him; and he courageously guided them

155 out” (1071 E). While, as I noted above, Gaimar seems to be following the Chronicle at this point, at least insofar as his cast of characters is concerned, he continues well beyond where it and the majority of other sources cease to report on the outlaw. For when he once gets

Hereward safely away from Ely, Gaimar has him come to Bruneswald where he takes up the life of a forest outlaw. Once again, the only parallel for this is in the Gesta. where Hereward first flees to Bruneswald, and then on to “magnis silvis Northamtunæ” (Gesta 392) [the great forests of Northamptonshire” (Swanton 80)]. The generality of this sequence of places is such that it is quite possible that both Richard and Gaimar were drawing on the same body of local tradition, that is, that both had heard circulating popular tales in which Hereward had gone to Bruneswald. However, taken together with the similarities in their accounts of the end of the siege of Ely and sacking of Peterborough, this correspondence in the two accounts suggests that the Gesta may have been the model for this portion of Gaimar’s narrative as well. The likelihood of this is increased by the similarities the two works show in the names of Hereward’s companions. Although none of Hereward’s outlaw gang are mentioned in any other source, both of these works list an outlaw named Winter as one of his principal companions, and in his edition of Gaimar’s Historv. Bell pointed out that the names Alvriz

Grusgan in Gaimar may well be the same as Aluricus Grugan in the Gesta. Likewise he remarks that the description that Gaimar gives of Hereward’s battle with one Gier in

Bruneswald may be referring to the same person as the Gesta’s Ogger. Bell suggests that

Gaimar may have actually written “Ogier”, which became “Gier” in the process of scribal copying of the manuscript (270 n. 11. 5575). The similarities in these accounts, though.

156 remain very general, and if Gaimar did rely on the Gesta for this portion of his narrrative he substantially reworked the material.

The events surrounding the reconciliation of Hereward and William are another place where Gaimar appears to have drawn on the Gesta. but altered his source. Here the alterations are all in the direction of improving the specificity and directness of the story. In the Gesta Hereward’s reconciliation with William occurs through the intervention of a woman who is identified as the widow of one Earl Dolfm, but who is never herself named.

She pursued Hereward with “frequent envoys” (Swanton 83) and arranged with King

William that if Hereward would cease his raids, then William would let him peaceably marry this wealthy widow. In the Gesta. Hereward is already married to Turfrida, the wife he eventually won during his adventures abroad as a young man, and he must put her aside before he can agree to this arrangement. He does so and she retires to Crowland where she took “the holy veil” (Swanton 84). The moral issues raised by Hereward’s actions in regard to Turfrida seemed to trouble Richard some, for he remarked that.

Qua de causa multa incommoda ei post evenerunt, quia sapientissima erat et in necessitate magni consilii. Postea enim, sicut ipse sæpe professas est, non ei sicut in tempore ejus sic prospéré contigerunt multa. (Gesta 398)

[as a result of this many unfortunate things happened to him later on, because she had been very wise and good with advice in an emergency. For subsequently, as he himself often admitted, much happened to him which would not have done in his rise to success. (Swanton 84)]

As is typical with him, though, Richard does not hammer home the moral point by enumerating what these “unfortunate things” were that befell the outlaw because of his lack of fidelity to his first wife.

157 In Gaimar the whole situation is vastly simplified and the moral difficulties are

entirely removed. Since the adventures of Hereward’s youth and coming of age are not told, the wife of his youth is never brought up, and as far as we know from Gaimar’s narrative he

is still unmarried. Hereward is depicted as free, then, to receive the addresses of this peace

making suitor. Unlike the Gesta. Gaimar gives the name of the woman who eventually brought William and Hereward together; he calls her Alftrued. And even as Hereward’s first wife is absent from Gaimar’s Historv. so is the deceased husband that the Gesta gives to

Alftrued, for Gaimar does not call her a widow (as she is called in the Gesta), and it is with her father’s wealth that she tempts the outlaw, not her deceased husband’s. Gaimar’s version, as compared to the Gesta. serves to streamline the essential story and keeps the

focus on the important characters, Alftrued and Hereward. Yet these differences are really more cosmetic than substantive, and the essential outline of events is similar enough in both accounts that Gaimar may well have been drawing on the Gesta for the basic story, which he

simplified and clarified to better fit his own more compact account of the outlaw.

Gaimar’s version of events differs in tone as well as style from the Gesta. It is

interesting that Gaimar concludes his section on the Peterborough assault and its aftermath

by commenting that “Sil sen vengat, ne fu mie tort, / Dicels de Burg e dEstanford” [Thus he avenged himself, and it was no wrong, / On the men of Peterborough and Stamford] (11.

5569-5570). Gaimar seems to feel that since the men of Peterborough had “betrayed him” he was not to be blamed for sacking the abbey. This is one of the most obvious places where the Gaimar’s differences in attitude from the monastic accounts can be seen. To the Anglo-

Saxon chronicler and to Hugh Candidus, Hereward was worthy of blame, but they did allow that circumstances and his reasons somewhat mitigated the wrong he had done. To Richard

158 in the Gesta. Hereward was caught up in a personal vendetta, and lost sight of the damage he might be doing to the abbey. This fault was remedied by his quick action in returning the stolen goods. For Gaimar, Hereward is wholly justified in his actions by Peterborough’s betrayal of him. There is no suggestion that he returns the stolen goods, nor that he suffers any ill effects for having sacked the abbey. In these accounts the focus is more and more on the outlaw himself, and less on the monastic communities surrounding him.

Gaimar does not celebrate Hereward the outlaw in order to exhibit the strength of local determination to fight for property rights, nor to link the claims of local monasteries with a popular figure in local legend, as do both the Liber Eliensis and the Gesta. Rather,

Gaimar celebrates the outlaw as a heroic warrior. In this, Gaimar’s Hereward bears a closer resemblance to the Anglo-Saxon outlaws of the Chronicle than Richard’s does. The outlaw heroes of the Chronicle burned towns and plundered the countryside with little indication from the narrators that this behavior deserved censure. Similarly, while Gaimar follows the

Gesta’s sequence of events regarding the raid on Peterborough, he thinks that Hereward “did no wrong” in the act, and he does not mitigate it as Richard does by having the outlaw return the stolen goods.

The most striking difference in content between the Gesta and Gaimar is in the way that they end their stories of Hereward, and this difference is an outgrowth of their different approaches to and uses of the outlaw legends. In contrast to the heroic treatment that Gaimar lavishes on Hereward’s death, the Gesta has almost nothing to say. It suggests that he lived out the remainder of his life, after settling with William, in peace, but never explicitly states that this is so. In fact, the emphasis is on Hereward’s retention of his possessions and his peace with William, and does not provide any particulars about his death at all: “cum terris et

159 possessionibus patris sui multis postmodum vixit annis, regi Willelmo fideliter serviens ac devote compatriotis placens et amicis; ac sic demum quievit in pace, cujus animæ propicietur

Deus. Amen” (Gesta 404) ["with his father’s land and possessions he lived on for many years faithfully serving King William and devotedly reconciled to his compatriots and friends. And thus in the end rested in peace, upon whose soul may God have mercy"

(Swanton 88)]. While Richard was content to conclude his account of the outlaw with what amounts to a “happily ever after” ending, Gaimar’s more violent and bloody ending better fits our expectations of what an outlaw-hero’s death is like. This is more an illustration of our distance from the medieval monastic worldview, and of the subsequent development of the outlaw-hero narrative tradition away from that worldview, than it is evidence of the historical validity of Gaimar’s version, although critics have tended to read it in the latter terms. Gaimar’s death scene for Hereward drew heavily on the more tragic traditions of the heroic warrior’s death; it has been noted that it is “more Northern in character” than that given by Richard (Leach 349). The end of Hereward, given in graphic detail by Gaimar, brings to mind the deaths of the Icelandic outlaws Grettir and Gisli, and is a celebration of the heroic strength and courage emphasized throughout the Hereward section. It is not too surprising, then, that although the Gesta is the usual authority on Hereward, Gaimar is the usual source for the outlaw’s end. According to Gaimar, despite the truce William had reached with Hereward, or rather because of it, the Norman knights could not abide

Hereward’s continuing presence. His Norman enemies, therefore, ambush him while he is eating. Like Grettir, who was finally slain by his enemies when his servant Glaum neglected to remove the ladder by which they entered his chamber, Hereward meets his end because of

160 the incompetence of his servant Ailward, who falls asleep on watch, allowing the Normans to stealthily approach the outlaw and his men while they are unarmed and eating.

Hereward’s final battle is reminiscent of another Icelandic outlaw, Gisli. Hereward manages to snatch up a sword, lance, and shield before he is set upon. Using such weapons as he can lay his hands on, Hereward attacks the Normans who are attacking his men.

Quickly, however, he is surrounded on all sides and wounded. Despite many and grievous wounds he continues to fight, and even after his lance breaks and his assailants think to kill him easily he slays many of them with his sword. So many, in fact, that some begin to falter and flee. Then his sword breaks. Left with only a shield, he uses it to kill two more of his assailants before four of them spear him from behind with their lances. Like Gisli’s final act of throwing himself with his sword upon an assailant, Hereward with his last effort, throws his shield with such force at one of his four slayers that the blow breaks his neck. Another assailant ensures the outlaw’s death by decapitating him.

With that, Gaimar has one of the assailants pay honor to the fallen outlaw by remarking: “Ke vnc si hardi ne fu troue; / E sil oust od lui tels trais, / Mar i entrassent les

Franceis” [That one so bold had never been found; / And that if he had had with him three such, / 111 would the French have come there] (11. 5696-5698). The conclusion of the

Hereward section emphasizes that it is precisely these warrior virtues in Hereward that make him such an attractive figure for Gaimar, and he is not content to close his account of the outlaw without some moralizing of his own. He immediately compares Hereward and his end to the fates of those who were his companions at Ely, Morkere and Bishop Ægelwine,

161 “Ki se redirent folement” [who foolishly surrendered themselves] (5704), and spent the remainder of their lives in prison. Gaimar observes that

Mielz lur venist, quant furent pris. Le iur que fussent oscis. Quant en prison furent getez; E Hereward fü eschapez.

[Better would it have been for them, when they were taken. That they had been killed that day When they were cast into prison. And Hereward escaped.] (5707-5710)

For Gaimar, Hereward serves as an exemplar of military skill and virtue, and a foil for the other rebels against William. Sentiments like these can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxon

Chronicle, which remarks on Hereward’s flight with his men, that “he hi ahtlice ut lædde”

[he courageously guided them out] and contrasts this with those who surrendered to William:

“[)a men he ateah swa swa he wolde” [those men he dealt with even as he pleased] (1071 E).

It is a spirit that seems native to the outlaw-hero, for we see almost identical sentiments expressed centuries later in a Robin Hood ballad deriving from the late medieval period,

“Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne”:

It had beene better for William a Trent To hange upon a gallowe Then for to lye in the greenwoode. There slaine with an arrowe. (Dobson and Taylor 142)

As with Hereward’s would-be companions, for whom it would have been better to die while holding true to their rebel principles than to have capitulated to the king, for William a Trent it would have been better to have joined the outlaw band and been hung than to have joined with the sheriff and been slain by an outlaw.

162 Through the figure of Hereward, then, Gaimar suggests that had Malcolm, Ægelwine,

Waltheof, and the other English rebels he swiftly surveys only possessed the indomitable

spirit that Hereward exemplified, then William might have been turned back and the French

driven out of England. As he has Hereward’s slayer observe, “sil ne fust issi oscis, / Tuz les enchascat fors del pais” [if he had not been killed thus / He would have driven them [the

French] all out of the country] (11. 5699-5700). This also serves as a fitting explanation for the treachery of the French - there is no other way, it seems, to stop an outlaw-hero such as

Hereward.

Despite the manifest difference in tone and detail between Gaimar’s account and the

Gesta. the differences between the works are not irreconcilable. Richard stops telling his story in the Gesta before he gets to Hereward’s death. Just as his story really begins with

Hereward’s outlawry, its end comes when the king and the outlaw are reconciled, and the outlaw is inlawed again. Richard’s story is about the loss, struggle for, and regaining of property and traditional rights. In that, the death scene of Hereward would have been superfluous. However, in Gaimar, where the focus is on the warrior virtues of the hero, his courage, his great strength, and his ability in battle, the death scene serves as the capstone for the Hereward section and brings to the front the messages that Gaimar sees manifest in a hero like Hereward.

Like Gaimar’s Historv. the brief account of Hereward found in the Chronicle of

Hyde closes with an account of his death. The Hyde account presents us with the only version of a Hereward story we have from a hostile source, and one that is significantly outside of the fenlands region. It was probably written contemporaneously with the Gesta.

163 around 1120-1135, and at Lewes rather than at Hyde (Liebermann, para. 22). Here there is no heroic death, but instead the outlaw is “miserabiliter occubuit” [miserably killed], after he and his companions are surrounded by enemies (295). Interestingly, the Hyde version of the outlaw’s end, although considerably less detailed than Gaimar’s, is not inconsistent with it in the facts that it gives, only in the tone. The Hvde version does give the impression that

Hereward was never able to come to peace with William, but its wording is vague and general enough that this is never explictly stated, and it could be reporting the same tradition that Gaimar knew.

The Hyde account tells one other interesting story about Hereward, a story that De

Lange identifies as also being told of “the viking Hasting at the siege of Luna” (4), and that

Leach reports additionally of Harald Harôraôi, and “in the three other cases where it has been recorded, this game of possum was played by Normans or their kin” (350). The story relates how the protagonist gained entrance into a city he was unsuccessfully besieging by faking his own death. In the Chronicle of Hvde. this story is told of Hereward as an example of his low cunning. The Hereward material occurs in a section describing the uprisings against

William, and situated indefinitely in the years following the conquest. What is so interesting about this is that the rebellion at Ely and sacking of Peterborough abbey, which were generally the most widely recorded of Hereward’s deeds, are not reported here. Instead, we are first told that Hereward, here a man of low rank (“genere quidam infimus”) but great in courage and manhood (“animo et viribus precipuus”) had assembled a powerful band and secreted himself in some fens somewhere in the midlands region (Hvde 295). Among the crimes he committed, we are told, was the slaying of Frederic, brother of Earl William de

164 Warenne, in his own house one night by trickery. If Felix Liebermann is correct in placing this chronicle as originating at Lewes rather than at Hyde, then its hostility to Hereward can be traced to this event, for the Warennes were Lewes’ founders (Liebermann, para. 22). The report of Hereward’s killing of Frederick is immediately followed by another story demonstrating the kind of trickery the outlaw was capable of. In it, Hereward, after unsuccessfully attempting to breach a certain (unnamed) fortress, ordered that his men lay him on a bier and pretend that he was dead. The gullible inhabitants of the fortress allowed the outlaw to be brought into the church prepatory to burial, and there he leaped fully armed from the bier and, overcoming the inhabitants, conquered the fortress. The Hyde chronicler permits us to assume that it was through some such cunning maneuver that Hereward was able to kill Frederick de Warenne.

There are several reasons why the Hyde account of Hereward, though brief, is interesting and unusual. First, it comes from a monastery outside of the fenlands, and as such indicates that stories of the outlaw did spread out beyond the local vicinity. Secondly, it is the only openly hostile account that is preserved. Even the Norman-based account of the end of the siege of Ely preserved in Book 11 of the Liber Eliensis never says anything derogatory about Hereward. The Hvde account’s reference to Hereward as deriving from the lowest rank of society, “genere quidam infimus,” unlike his victim Frederick, “genere et possessionibus insignitum” [famous for his lineage and for his holdings] (295), can probably safely be considered partisan rhetoric. To that author, Hereward was a villain in both the ancient and modem senses of the word. But this dramatic lowering of Hereward’s social class does serve to warn us that his elevation as a descendant of the powerful Earl Leofric,

165 and nephew of Abbot Brand, in the equally, if oppositely, partisan fenland accounts is similarly a product of heroic mythmaking.

It is the flexibility of the Hereward legends that probably ensured their longevity.

The fenland monks found ways to incorporate his stories into the histories of their institutions. The oposculum author’s interest in turning this secular outlaw into a monastic hero tells us that interest in Hereward within the monasteries extended beyond Richard and his circle of “assistants.” Indeed, by the middle of the twelfth century Hereward seems to have become a culture hero for the monasteries in the region, and it is from them that the stories primarily passed in writing down to subsequent generations. Although these monastic authors mainly emphasized the outlaw’s associations with their monasteries, and his defenses of tradition and property rights, the legends that they drew from, and the stories that they retold, still emphasized the warrior virtues of courage, cunning strategy, and leadership. We cannot know how and why the stories of Hereward were told by those from whom Richard and the others collected them, but the number and variety of stories they did collect tell us about their popularity.

Even those whose political sympathies were different from Hereward’s seem to have felt bound to recognize the much praised skill and bravery of the outlaw. We can see this most vividly in the hostile “Hvde” Chronicle, which even while denigrating Hereward’s birth, could make no case against his courage, calling him “genere quidam infimus, sed animo et viribus precipuus” [in origin of the lowest rank, but in spirit and manhood excellent] (Hvde 295). Such an acknowledgement from an openly hostile source is a testimony to the power and spread of the Hereward legends. They appear to have been well

166 known and convincing enough that even outside of the fenlands his enemies could not openly deny his courage or skill as a warrior.

It is tempting to think that the stories told by Geoffrey Gaimar are closer to the popularly circulating Hereward legends than are those that were preserved in the monasteries. The fact that his Hereward legends are resolutely secular and heroic in a way reminiscent of the Old English outlaws we examined above in Chapter 1 would seem to argue in support of this. The fact that they are largely based on two monastic sources, the

Gesta and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, however, cautions us against generalizing too broadly based on them. They are clearly no less tailored and customized for his courtly audience than the monastic legends are for their ecclesiastical audience.

The ability of the Hereward legends to be adapted to so many ends is what makes them such an important link between the Anglo-Saxon outlaws and romance heroes such as

Gamelyn and Havelock. In this dissertation I have largely focused on the function and role of the Hereward stories in their local contexts, but as I detailed in the first chapter, there is a larger tradition of outlaw-hero narrative of which they are an important part. Their importance, for us at least, lies in the way that they serve as a bridge between the Anglo-

Saxon outlaw tradition, and the feudal society that was introduced by William the Conqueror in the eleventh century. As Maurice Keen has observed, “It is important to remember this, that if Hereward was the lineal ancestor of Robin Hood, he was also the lineal descendant of the aristocratic heroes of Anglo-Saxon history, Byrhtnoth and Alfred the Great” (Outlaws

21). That descent can be seen most clearly in the stories of Gaimar and the Hvde author, who make no attempt to make the outlaw more acceptable for an ecclesiastical audience.

But it can also be seen in the Gesta. where the structure of dispossession and repossession

167 around which the story turns follows the same basic pattern as the Anglo-Saxon stories of the

lord who is outlawed, gathers an army, and returns to fight for his rights.

And yet in the Gesta especially, significant changes have been introduced to the basic Anglo-Saxon pattern to fit the new political realities. Hereward never poses the kind of threat to William, for instance, that the Anglo-Saxon outlaws posed to Edward. Rather than the king, the local Norman lords, Frederick de Warenne and Ivo de Taillebois, become the outlaw’s enemies, and there is an overriding faith that if the king and Hereward could only meet and discuss things calmly they would inspire mutual respect and settle their differences amicably. This satisfactory conclusion is delayed by the repeated intervention and bad counsel of powerful Norman lords. Thus, like the later Robin Hood ballads, the outlaw makes no serious attempt to topple the king, only directs his vengeance at unjust local authorities who act with a heavy handedness and cruelty that the king, when properly informed, immediately moves to correct. In the Gesta we can see how the expansions of royal power and central government in the later Middle Ages eventually lead to the situation that Hobsbawm recognized when he remarked that “bandits in politics tend to be... revolutionary traditionalists” (Hobsbawm 27).

Although Hereward is engaged in one battle or another throughout the Gesta

Herewardi. we can see the outlaw-hero narrative beginning to move away from a reliance upon physical strength and direct threat to the king to a trust in the strength of established

legal claims for redress of injuries. It is a trend that was to be a developed further in the vernacular romances of outlaw heroes that followed the Gesta Herewardi. The growing trust

in institutional remedies can be seen in the Gesta not only in the faith placed in the king’s ultimate benevolence and good will, but also in the very context in which the work itself was

168 preserved, its presence in a cartulary used as an important evidentiary document in

Peterborough’s battles to recover property lost following the Norman conquest. In this context, the Gesta serves as a witness to the will of the fenland people to fight for their property, but does so in a manuscript meant to aid in legal, not physical battle.

The themes of dispossession and repossession that dominate the Hereward remain central to the depictions of outlaw heroes in the vernacular romances that followed them.

The outlaw narratives that fall between the Gesta Herewardi and the outlaws of the ballads are mainly preserved for us in the vernacular romances that Susan Crane has ably examined in her book Insular Romance. She demonstrates that these romances, several of which are about outlaws, are animated by the concerns of the baronial landholders of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries:

The barony’s landed wealth in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, its restricted

military power and, in contrast, its access to a functioning legal system that

controlled the questions of land rights on which its strength depended—together these

conditions inform the ideal model of heroic resistance to royal injustice that the

Anglo-Norman romances of English heroes offer. (85)

In the new political realities, armed uprising was a less practical means of redress than it had been in the time of Earls Godwin or Ælfgar, or even of Hereward. Crane demonstrates that in these romances the move from armed resistance to negotiated settlement, that we saw beginning in the Gesta Herewardi. reached the point where faith in the ultimate Justice of the legal system largely replaced faith in the efficacy of armed insurrection (Crane 18-23).

Nevertheless, like outlaw narratives going all the way back into the Anglo-Saxon period.

169 these romances perpetuate the basic assumptions of a landholding class, in Crane’s words

“that noble power rests in the land and its heritability” (217). Up until the end of the Middle

Ages, the thing that probably most distinguished outlaw-hero narratives from other genres was this concern over land and traditional rights.

Treatments of the romance outlaws have often looked to French models and influences rather than to a pre-existing English outlaw-narrative tradition. Even Crane, despite her welcome call for attention to the “separateness from France” that insular authors exhibit through their use of English heroes and locales as well as their avoidance of French literary conventions, does not look at native English narratives such as those found in the

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as models for the romance outlaws (216). As 1 have demonstrated, the outlaw tradition of the vernacular romances can be seen as a development of an existing

English popular narrative tradition, as well as a reaction to the French chanson de geste.

However, the existence of an ongoing outlaw-hero tradition in England already focused primarily around the issue of landholding and its concomitant rights has often been overlooked. We ought not to let the Norman Conquest, as sweeping as the changes it introduced were, prevent us from seeing continuities with the Old English traditions. It is precisely here that the Hereward narratives are most important, for by presenting us with an

Anglo-Saxon outlaw hero who retained his popularity throughout much of the Middle Ages, they provide us with the opportunity to see that tradition of storytelling adapting and changing under the demands of new audiences and new political and social realities.

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